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(Phoenix Labs Image)
Canadian video game developer Phoenix Labs, creator of Dauntless and Fae Farm, announced Monday that it’s laying off a majority of its staff.
The news came via a post on Phoenix Labs’ official LinkedIn page, and was first spotted by Game Developer.
“We have made the tough decision to part ways with the majority of the studio as part of unfortunate but necessary changes to our operations,” the company wrote. “We will share more details in the coming weeks about what this means for Dauntless and Fae Farm.”
GeekWire reached out to Phoenix Labs for additional comment.
The company has around 90 employees, according to LinkedIn.
These layoffs are the latest in a long series of downsizings, reorganizations, and studio closures across the video game industry, and may potentially be the largest so far this year. Other affected companies in 2025 include the French conglomerate Ubisoft, which shuttered a studio in the UK on Monday, and a small number of dismissals at Seattle’s Highwire Games.
In Phoenix Labs’ case, however, these layoffs could bechalked up to the failure of Awakening, the most recent expansion for Phoenix Labs’ flagship project Dauntless, which received a chilly reception from players when it released on Dec. 5.
Debuting in 2018, Dauntless is a live service game that challenges players to hunt down enormous monsters called Behemoths, either alone or in small teams online. After a successful hunt, players can use parts of fallen Behemoths to create better weapons and armor, which allows them to take on more and bigger challenges.
Awakening was advertised as a big mechanical update for Dauntless, and came out alongside its long-awaited debut on Steam. On release, it quickly came under fire for a new, unannounced monetization strategy.
Players logged into Dauntless to discover Awakening had added a new series of aggressive microtransactions, and that much of players’ previously existing progress through the game had been reset. In short, Phoenix Labs had taken away players’ hard-earned in-game equipment, then offered to sell it back to them for real money.
This was an unusual move for Dauntless, which was not previously known for its predatory in-game purchases. Analysts and fans both attribute this sudden about-face to Phoenix Labs’ owner, blockchain gaming company Forte Labs, which acquired Phoenix Labs in 2023 under an unusual cloud of secrecy.
A previous round of layoffs at Phoenix Labs in May 2024 was reportedly ordered by Forte, including the cancellation of an unnamed major project.
