Now the studio is on the brink of closure

earthpressnews

For a long time you couldn’t play the popular “Monster Hunter” series on PC, PS4 and Xbox One, but that only changed in 2018 with Monster Hunter World. The studio Phoenix Labs recognized the gap in 2016 and wanted to offer an alternative with the MMO Dauntless. The company is now fighting for its existence. Fae Farm (Steam) also failed to bring the hoped-for turnaround.

This was the situation for a long time:

  • The Monster Hunter series was huge in Asia and on handheld consoles, but lacked a version in the West for PC, PS4, Xbox One for many years.
  • The Phoenix Labs studio saw an opportunity here and developed “Dauntless,” an alternative for Monster Hunter fans who also wanted to hunt monsters on PC, Xbox and PlayStation. The game was introduced in December 2016, came to PC in beta in May 2018 and to consoles in 2019.
  • The problem: With Monster Hunter World, this very idea from Capcom itself appeared in 2018 for PC, PS4 and Xbox One, taking all the wind out of Dauntless’s sails.

    • Dauntless Console Launch Trailer PS4

    More videos

    Studio lays off employees and is about to go out of business

    That is the consequence: Phoenix Labs tried a lot to make Dauntles a hit and did a good job over the years, but the game never managed to generate any real hype.

    A second game, Fae Farm, also failed to gather the necessary players.

    It has now been announced that Phoenix Labs has laid off employees and stopped developing several games that had not yet been presented.

    It is not entirely clear how many employees were laid off. One source speaks of 100 employees, another even of 200.

    Now they want to concentrate on the live service of Dauntless and Fae Farm.

    The company says this is the “last resort for Phoenix Labs to survive.”

    Studio worked on new game for 5 years, wanted to present it in June

    Why is that? Developers say that Phoenix Labs was taken over by the blockchain company Forte in 2023, which has now made this decision.

    Particularly bitter: Apparently Phoenix Labs worked for 5 years on a game that they wanted to present in June 2024. That doesn’t happen anymore.

    This is what lies behind it: Phoenix Labs seems like a hapless studio that did a lot of things right but was simply overwhelmed by circumstances.

    The hype surrounding Dauntless was initially high, but ended abruptly with the announcement of Monster Hunter World.

    Fae Farm is also described as a good game, but currently only has 177 average players on Steam.

    If you now feel like going on a monster hunt, you can take a look at Dauntless or you’ll have to wait a while because Capcom is planning the next monster hunt: Capcom is probably bringing something like Monster Hunter World 2: With an open world, everything sounds fantastic

    mmod-game