Bandai Namco subsidiary Reflector Entertainment has announced that not only was their debut title Unknown 9: Awakening a commercial “failure”, but also that its poor performance has led the developer to both cut its workforce and cancel their next project.
If you didn’t play or even hear about Unknown 9: Awakening, we don’t blame you.
Despite having ‘wowed’ Bandai Namco executives enough to have them outright buy the Canada-based Reflector Entertainment, when the game released in October 2024, the third-person action-adventure title did so to an all-time peak Steam concurrent player count of just 285 – an abysmal result by any metric.
To add insult to injury, these numbers do not represent the game’s sales on the platform, as copies of Unknown 9 were given away for free to anyone who bought an AMD X870 or X870E motherboard.
The reasons behind this lack of interest in Unknown 9: Awakening are aplenty, ranging from performance issues, to protagonist Haroona sporting a particularly androgynous (which was considered even more egregious given that she was being portrayed by The Witcher star Anya Chalotra), to the heavy-involvement of infamous narrative consultancy company Sweet Baby Inc.
And it was in light of the game’s failure that, on January 20th, Reflector Entertainment issued a statement confirming that not only had the game underperformed, but that as a result, the studio would no longer be moving forward with their next project, which apparently was already in development.
In a post on Linkedin, Reflector CEO and Bandai Namco Entertainment Europe COO Herve Hoerdt informed the public, “Today, I informed our teams that I made the decision to not greenlight further work on a future project that was in conceptualization phase and thus terminating this development line. Continuing this project would not have been sustainable for the future of the studio.”
“This decision correlates directly with the failure of the studio’s ambitious and courageous first project, a new IP with a rich transmedia universe,” he continued. “The performance of the release didn’t come near the company expectations, after numerous timeline adjustments and investments, both financially and other, and didn’t warrant any further exploration in this universe.”
As detailed on the official Unknown 9 website, the plans to build such a “transmedia universe” around the IP encompassed the game, a comic book tie-in, a novel trilogy (as written by noted Dominic Grey novel series scribe Layton Green), a comic book run, and two separate web series, all of which were surprisingly completed prior to this announcement.
“Unfortunately, this also affects back-office staff, bringing the support teams in line with the single project approach the studio will adopt for the imminent future,” added Hoerdt. “Where possible, staff will be assigned to this project, based on an existing Bandai Namco IP, which is shaping up very well.”
“Reflector Entertainment will be providing adequate severance packages, extended health benefits for affected staff and their families, continued access to emotional, mental health and counselling services and finally, proactive career planning support to set them up for future success,” he concluded his statement. “Bandai Namco Entertainment Europe will continue investing on creating Western content for global audiences, in line with the Group’s vision.”
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Notably, this is but the second round of layoffs undertaken by Reflector Entertainment since Unknown 9‘s release.
In November 2024, the studio announced that in an service of “refocusing our efforts as we enter a new phase of development”, they would be cutting “:approximately 18%” of their total workforce, with those affected being devs “who aren’t assigned to roles that our active projects require”.