Back in 2023, we were dismayed at the news that Dauntless and Fae Farm studio Phoenix Labs was being crushed with a nasty round of layoffs just after a supposed investor buyout. Phoenix Labs had been owned by a Singaporean company, Garena, since 2020, and was then reportedly working on around 10 new games, but it was abruptly bought out by mysterious investors in 2023. At the time, we noted how weird it was that the company wouldn’t tell anyone who, exactly, had bought it or for how much. It also ignored our polite questions on the subject, which surprised us as Phoenix Labs was a generally press-friendly and communicative studio back then.
In any case, the situation at the studio only deteriorated from our vantage point from there, leading to a delay for Fae Farm, a content drought for Dauntless, an executive exodus, and multiple rounds of layoffs.
Now, thanks to ace work by GameDeveloper.com, we’re finding out what exactly happened that turned Garena’s star studio into a crumbly lump: The buyer was Forte Labs, a blockchain company.
GameDeveloper’s unnamed sources – among them five former Phoenix Labs employees – say that “everyone at the studio was barred from revealing news of the purchase to anyone outside the company.” Phoenix Labs was apparently keeping its parent company’s name such a secret that new hires didn’t even learn the name Forte Labs until “after signing their paperwork. In fact, they suggest that the Phoenix Labs CEO implied Forte as an investor, not an owner. (That tracks with the way Phoenix Labs communicated the buyout, as well; it was phrased to press as “an investor-backed management buyout” that most certainly misled the industry for for months.)
Another secret? Forte Labs also owned Rumble Games, the team behind NFT game Towers and Titans, also barred from talking about Forte. It shut Rumble down in July; the dev quoted in the story called Forte’s involvement a “shitshow.”
According to GameDeveloper, Forte Labs has its fingers in a bunch of Web3 and blockchain pies, even collaborating with Zynga on a blockchain game called Sugartown; it’s also sunk money into GameFi groups, a Game7 venture, and an Australian gambling machine manufacturer. With Phoenix Labs, GD’s sources claim, Forte was hoping to position it as a market leader in “an age of abundance” thanks to blockchain, though workers say they were “uncomfortable with hawking digital items with speculative value to children and teenagers.” Even so, Forte was behind the decision to axe most of PL’s in-development titles, including Project Dragon.
Forte Labs did apparently respond to GameDeveloper’s request for comment. “[T]he acquisition [of Phoenix Labs] was not announced, but I don’t think there was a formal policy around disclosure,” a spokesperson for the company said (note the phrasing). The spokesperson also says the company is “not currently seeking new partners or funding on paused projects; but Phoenix is currently operating its live games.”
As GD notes, it doesn’t seem as if anything illegal is going on, but it certainly casts the company – and other secretive acquisitions in the gaming industry – in a new light. While none of the sources could prove their theory on all the secrecy, it just doesn’t take a genius to guess why a company would want to keep its ownership by a blockchain outfit secret given the hostility and distrust for blockchain scammery in the industry. More importantly, it explains just what happened to Phoenix Labs last year when it turned from hero to zero – and surely impacts any remaining faith in its extant games.
