The future of MechWarrior looks uncertain amid Piranha Games layoffs and Toadman Interactive closure

rockpapershotgun.com:

MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries support studio Toadman Interactive have been shuttered by parent company Enad Global 7 as part of "cost-saving measures". This follows the studio closing down offices in Stockholm, Visby, and Oslo last November, as well as a number of redundancies at their Berlin studio. Toadman - who also developed soulslike Immortal: Unchained and provided support work for Helldivers 2 - employed 69 people at the time of closure.

This coincides with Enad Global 7 laying off "approximately" 38 people at Piranha Games, whose latest series entry MechWarrior 5: Clans "performed below expectations". Enad Global 7's CEO Ji Ham said the following:

“The team at Piranha truly delivered a high-quality game that exceeded both internal as well as external expectations in terms of quality, story and gameplay. Despite the phenomenal work by the team at Piranha, the game failed to reach new audiences and expand its core audience as anticipated and therefore has not met the necessary sales targets, which has forced us to undertake necessary actions."

Piranha have been the de facto custodians of the MechWarrior series since releasing MechWarrior Online in 2013.

As Eurogamer report, Enad Global 7's restructuring echoes a spate of other recent studio closures in 2025 already, those being Robocraft 2 developer Freejam and Godfall's Counterplay Games. Last week, we learned that Gears Tactics developer Splash Damage had cancelled Transformers: Reactivate, with "a number of roles…potentially at risk of redundancy".

Best wishes to all affected. A Toadman developer once sent me a key for Immortal: Unchained after I met him at a bar in Stockholm. He also showed me where the tube station was at 4am. I was not in a fit state to otherwise locate the tube station on my own initiative, so this was much appreciated.