Camelot Unchained studio Unchained Entertainment reportedly laid off 40% of its devs

    
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We’ve got some bad news for fans and followers of Camelot Unchained: It appears that Mark Jacobs’ studio Unchained Entertainment has lost a large chunk of its team.

Andrew Meggs, a former co-founder of Unchained Entertainment (back when it was called City State Entertainment) who left for Meta back in 2022, posted to Linkedin that “roughly 24 out of 55 people” at Unchained (so slightly more than 40%) “were let go last week” – a result, he says, of “just the recurring game industry grinder of funding and project changes, nothing about the individuals affected.” Meggs had nothing but kind words for the CSE/UCE staffers, saying he had set “a high bar on hiring” when he worked there and “that culture endured after [he] moved on,” meaning the engineers would be hireworthy.

Readers will recall that RvR MMORPG Camelot Unchained was originally Kickstarted back in 2013 and has been in development ever since, through the formation of a second studio and the announcement of a second game using CU’s custom-built engine. Just a year ago, the company relaunched that second game, Final Stand Ragnarok, and revealed it had picked up a new wave of investor funding to get Camelot Unchained to market by the end of 2025. As we noted just a month ago, we were meant to get a playable slice of the MMO last summer, but that didn’t happen, and while FSR saw updates throughout 2024, it saw no uptake with gamers. (We went into the whole story back in March of last year if you need the full refresher.)

While we don’t yet know for sure, it sure seems likely that Final Stand Ragnarok, which has never seen more than 42 concurrent players, is at risk, along with its team or possibly one of the company’s two studios. Last year, Unchained’s Mark Jacobs told us in no uncertain terms that his investors were aware FSR might fail but that such an outcome wouldn’t spell doom for the MMORPG – in other words, that work on Camelot Unchained (and of course, its unique engine) would continue. We’re assuming that since more than half of the studio was retained, that’s what’s happening.

We reached out to Jacobs this evening for clarity and will update as soon as we know more. We’re guessing the community will be getting a memo soon either way.

Source: Linkedin. Cheers, Max!
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