Wayfinder hasn’t even properly launched out of early access and it’s already suffering layoffs. According to Polygon’s unnamed sources, Tencent-owned Digital Extremes laid off “at least 20 people” focused heavily on its external teams – namely, Airship Syndicate, the studio behind Wayfinder. In fact, according to Polygon, Digital Extremes is offloading Wayfinder entirely to Airship Syndicate, though we don’t have a clear picture of what that means for either studio or for the game itself.
“We can confirm we have made the difficult decision to cease operations of our external projects division,” said Digital Extremes in its statement to Polygon. “We have had to say goodbye to a number of hardworking and highly valuable team members as a result.” The studio did not confirm how many people were affected or elaborate on its decision, and in fact it canceled a stream meant to run today.
Readers will recall that Digital Extremes just swapped CEOs, replacing founder and CEO James Schmalz with Steve Sinclair, the former Warframe boss who now leads Soulframe. Apparently, more than the executive team is being restructured here.
Wayfinder itself was revealed only a year ago; it launched into a rocky early access back in August, but its Steam playerbase has only shrunk over the last few months. Airship had been planning the proper free-to-play launch for 2024.
We’ve asked our contact for more information as soon as Airship has it sorted; in the meantime, our condolences to the team.
On Twitter, Airship told fans the game is “allive and better than ever” and that “all operations of the game will be handled by Airship Syndicate” with “no plans of stopping or slowing down.”
“We aren’t going anywhere. We’ll be back next week with our newest patch!”
