It's another one of those layoff days, unfortunately. This time the studio in question is PowerWash Simulator developer FuturLab, who have laid off seven staff members with little fanfare after cancelling a project that has been in development for several years.
This comes from This Week In Videogames, whose sources told them that FutureLab CEO Kirsty Rigden announced this unrevealed project had been cancelled back in June, 2026, with work having started on it two to three years ago. A source even noted that those working on the project were "left hanging with no new work being assigned to them for weeks." Another source alleged that "managers and team leads were not informed that their direct reports were going to be away or why," and that the laid off staffers stopped coming to work without telling co-workers.
During a company meeting held last month, the developer's COO Chris Mehers told the studio that it would be going through a redundancy process. Quite gallingly, during a following meeting, staff were told they shouldn't use the word "redundancy" in regards to laid off workers, but to refer to them as "the leavers" instead. Staff were also told in the August meeting that the layoffs were related only to the cancelled project, and any redundancies would not affect work on PowerWash Simulator 2.
On top of this, staff were informed that managers and team leads were "not included in choosing the affected individuals to not give them any of the guilt," and that these layoffs were handled in this fashion so that staff wouldn't have to endure "the stress of not knowing their job security for the two weeks of the process." In a statement, Rigden did confirm that FuturLab "recently cancelled a new non-PowerWash related project while in pre-production, as it would have cost us more than it was projected to make. Continuing with it wouldn’t have been a sensible decision."
The statement continued to say the studio is "fully committed to making [PowerWash Simulator 2] the best game it can be, while prototyping new ideas for future games, [and] this has meant looking at our future plans and requirements for the studio, and as a result seven people have left the business. This is awful as these are people who are super talented and many of whom have been with us a long time, and I really really appreciate them. This was not an easy or quick decision to make, but by making difficult decisions early we protect FuturLab in the future." FuturLab did not confirm whether staff were made redundant or if they left by other means.
As always, solidarity with all those affected.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/powerwash-simulator-devs-futurlab-laid-off-staff-and-cancelled-an-unrevealed-project-earlier-this-year-but-certainly-kept-quiet-about-it
