Possibility Space closes down, founder blames staff leaks
Possibility Space has become the second studio owned by Prytania Media to close in recent weeks following Crop Circle Games' closure in March. Both studios were founded by Jeff Strain, the co-founder of Guild Wars creators ArenaNet and the founder of State Of Decay developers Undead Labs.
In a message to staff about the studio's immediate closure, Strain implies the outcome was prompted by employees who leaked information about the company to a journalist.
"Late last week I received a list of topics and questions from Ethan Gach, a reporter at Kotaku, regarding an article he's writing about Prytania Media and the closure of Crop Circle Games," begins Strains layoff message to staff, as shared by Polygon journalist Nicole Carpenter.
"Much of it was expected but I was also stunned to see non-public information about Project Vonnegut, disclosure of our publishing partner with details of our business and financial relationship, and details of internal P&L discussions and confidential all-company meetings. Mr. Gach specifically credits current employees as the source of his information.
"Leaks of this nature are typically malicious and done by outside hacking, so to see internal team members under a confidentiality agreement engage in this was shocking. Given the company's own strict confidentiality and notification obligations, I immediately got on a plane for in-person meetings with our publishing partner to disclose the information breach and to discuss the impact on the project. During that discussion our partner expressed low confidence that they would be willing to invest the additional resources need to complete the game, so we mutually agreed to cancel Vonnegut."
The message goes on to say that today (April 12th) is the last day of employment for all staff, and that a final paycheck will be deposited for work up until that day. There is also no guarantee of any severance pay, with Strain writing that it will take a "few more days" to calculate the studio's
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