As first reported by GamesIndustry.biz, the Guildford studio made an undisclosed number of staff redundant recently. In a statement issued to Eurogamer, 22cans insisted development continues at the studio despite the layoffs. “Unfortunately, due to a number of factors including projects reaching a certain stage in their development, we can confirm that a number of roles at 22cans have been made redundant,” 22cans said. “Development at the studio is continuing however.” Eurogamer was told management will try to help staff affected find roles elsewhere in the industry. 22cans was founded in 2012 by Molyneux after he left Microsoft. Experimental mobile game Curiosity: What’s Inside the Cube? launched soon after, although it was met with controversy over a broken promise to make its winner a “digital god” and pay a portion of money made by the game. Controversial god sim Godus raised £450,000 on Kickstarter before launching in early access form in September 2013. It has yet to leave early access. The Trail: Frontier Challenge followed in August 2017, published by Kongregate. Workshop-tinkering industrialist sim Legacy was announced in February 2019, but we’ve heard little about it since. It’s inspired by Molyneux’s first-ever game, The Entrepreneur - a sim released in 1984 about growing a business. Legacy fleshes out that early idea, initially casting players as small-time inventors squirrelled away in a garage workshop. It’s still without a release date.
