Cyan Worlds, the developer of cult-classic games Myst and Riven, announced that it has made the decision to lay off 12 members of its staff. That’s “roughly half the team,” and the layoffs are effective at the end of this month.
The company made the announcement via BlueSky yesterday afternoon. “Industry conditions have forced us into a tricky spot where we are having to weigh the future health of our studio against the month-to-month realities of game development in 2025,” the post said. Unfortunately, this isn’t an uncommon message. Layoffs rocked the gaming industry throughout all of 2024, and numerous studios have already been affected in the first three months of 2025.
In January, three studios (including Counterplay Games, the developer of Godfall) closed their doors. February saw another three Warner Bros studios shuttered and the cancellation of the much-anticipated Wonder Woman video game. The studio claimed too many of its recent releases had missed the mark in terms of quality, and that the closures would allow Warner Bros to double-down on its existing franchises and IPs. That said, yesterday news broke that the planned expansion to Hogwarts Legacy was also canceled amid the turmoil.
Cyan friends and family, we have some difficult news to share today.(More details in-thread below.)
— Cyan Worlds 🌟 Riven (remade) out now! (@cyan.com) 2025-03-28T17:08:04.688Z
The gaming industry has seen an estimated 33,000 layoffs so far. The widespread job loss has led to the forming of the United Videogame Workers Union (UVW-CWA) with the goal of fighting for greater job security.
Cyan Worlds says, “We’ve been around for a very long time, and have been through tough times before…Our sincere hope is to continue to be around.”
The news of the layoffs didn’t come as a shock to Cyan Worlds’ staff. According to the studio, it had been “ultra-transparent” with its situation, so the team knew this was a possible outcome. Despite that, the studio says “it was (and is) still deeply saddening for all of us.”
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.