Insider Gaming, working from reporting that includes a CEO statement to This Week in Videogames, says FuturLab has laid off seven people after cancelling an unannounced project that was already in development. GamesIndustry.biz has a matching industry write-up as well. The cancelled title is not named publicly, and this draft does not invent a project title.
CEO Kirsty Rigden, in the statement relayed via TWIV, said continuing would have cost more than the project was projected to make, and that keeping it alive would not have been a sensible decision. She called the cuts awful because the people involved are talented and many had been with the studio a long time, while arguing that hard decisions made early help protect FuturLab’s future. On the forward plan she is explicit about focus: keep supporting PowerWash Simulator 2 and keep prototyping new ideas. That is support-plus-prototyping language — not a PowerWash Simulator 2 cancellation, and not a studio-closure claim.
Anonymous process color circulating around the same reports — including alleged instructions about not saying “redundancy,” “leavers” naming, or managers learning reports were gone after the fact — should stay labeled as sourced allegation / TWIV process color, not as studio-confirmed procedure. When pressed for more employment detail, the studio pointed to a confidential, legally binding process and declined further comment. UK employment law constraints are part of why the public record stays thin on names and timelines.
Read this as a contained soft industry cut at a known mid-size UK studio, not as an extinction-level event. For the wider crash-and-cost conversation on the same desk, see our live piece on Tim Sweeney calling this the worst crash since the 1980s. FuturLab’s on-record core remains: seven layoffs, one cancelled unnamed in-dev project, PWS2 support continuing, prototyping continuing.
