Fae Farm And Dauntless Developer Lays Off Majority Of The Studio

Phoenix Labs, the developer behind Fae Farm and Dauntless, has announced that has gone through another round of layoffs, which has impacted an unspecified but large portion of the studio.

“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,” Phoenix Lab explained in a statement on LinkedIn. “We will share more details in the coming weeks about what this means for Dauntless and Fae Farm.”

Phoenix Labs has already laid employees off through several rounds over the past few years. In 2023, Phoenix Labs let go of 9% of its employees and then did another series of layoffs in 2024, weeks before its next game was set to be announced. According to former Phoenix Labs employees, it was an open-world sandbox game called Everhaven, which was supposed to be revealed during the PC Gaming Show on June 9, 2024 and enter early access sometime in September.

Phoenix Labs became independent in 2023 but then was quietly bought by Forte Labs, a blockchain company. Dauntless, a Monster Hunter-like game, was first launched in 2019 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC via Epic Games Store. It finally came to Steam last month, but was heavily criticized for its new predatory monetization structure.