Sega has shutdown development on Hyenas, the multiplayer extraction shooter that was in development at Creative Assembly. This development stoppage comes shortly after a few beta periods for Hyenas were held online for testers. The latest test having just ended on September 11th.
This comes as Sega warns investors that they are recording a loss for the current financial year, saying, "profitability has been lowered mainly in European bases." To combat these losses, Sega is undergoing some restructuring throughout their studios that are "aimed at increasing efficiency." This also includes cancelling a couple of other titles in addition to Hyenas.
"In response to the lower profitability of the European region, we have reviewed the title portfolio of each development base in Europe and the resulting action will be to cancel Hyenas and some unannounced titles under development. Accordingly, we will implement a write-down of work-in-progress for titles under development."
Several staff members at Creative Assembly are now facing redundancy. So far, no announcements or news of layoffs have been shared, but they are sadly expected to happen as redundancy consultation has reportedly started at Creative Assembly.
Hyenas was announced in the summer of 2022. The game pitted several teams of up to three players battling it out in the search of various popular culture items (mainly Sega themed of course). These teams would loot areas of Plunderships, fight each other, fight AI controlled NPCs, and try to escape alive with their looted items. It set itself apart from many other extraction shooters by including areas that were zero-g and using characters that all had unique attributes and abilities.
The game seemed to flip-flop between being a paid title and being a free-to-play release. In August 2023, Sega themselves called Hyenas a "challenging" title and noted that they were still "making final adjustments to its business model."
A statement was made through the official Hyenas Twitter account. Creative Assembly issued their own statement earlier today about this situation.
