Phoenix Labs, the studio behind the free-to-play co-op Monster Hunter rival Dauntless and cozy, Stardew Valley-like Fae Farm, has announced another wave of layoffs that will see “the majority” of employees leave the company. This comes not long after the highly criticized overhaul of Dauntless.
Formed by ex-Riot Games developers back in 2014, Phoenix Labs first shipped its Monster Hunter-esque co-op game Dauntless. Often going under the radar in recent years, it impressed at launch and managed to cultivate a modest but dedicated fan base that would keep returning to the game. 2023’s Fae Farm was a very well-received life sim and is one of the most enjoyable games like Stardew Valley around, but unfortunately the company was hit by huge layoffs in 2024 and canceled some of the upcoming projects it had been working on.
There was a beacon of hope when Dauntless finally launched on Steam at the end of 2024 after years being exclusive to the Epic Games Store for PC players. However, instead of expanding Dauntless’ reach, the Steam launch and the game’s massive Awakening update created resentment among its existing community. Players were extremely unhappy with how much of their progress was reset with Awakening and lamented its new loot box-style cosmetics.
Since hitting Valve’s platform alongside the rollout of Awakening, Dauntless sits on one of the lowest Steam user scores I’ve ever come across – an ‘overwhelmingly negative’ 16%. When you compare that to its lifetime user rating of 4.5 stars out of 5 over on the Epic Games Store, you can see just how detrimental the update was to the game.
In a new statement posted to the company’s LinkedIn page, Phoenix Labs confirms that another wave of layoffs are hitting the studio.
“Today is another difficult day at Phoenix Labs,” the statement reads. “We have made the tough decision to part ways with the majority of the studio as part of unfortunate but necessary changes to our operations.” It also says that it will share details “in the coming weeks” about what the impact will be on Dauntless and Fae Farm.
If the majority of the studio is now gone, it seems incredibly unlikely that new content will continue to be rolled out for Dauntless now. Seeing as it’s a free PC game that depends on regular updates, that could be the end of the road for it.
Despite 2024 being a brutal year for industry layoffs, the amount of job losses and studio closures has continued to be concerningly high so far in 2025. Already in January we’ve seen redundancies hit Ubisoft, Jar of Sparks, Rocksteady, Splash Damage, and many more.