Inflexion Games, the developer of Nightingale says that despite making significant changes, it has not been 'commercially profitable enough' to avoid dozens of layoffs.

Inflexion Games, the developer of Nightingale, announced that they are laying off staff and closing their UK studio after a difficult launch and months with low and declining player numbers.

In a message on X, CEO Aaryn flynn wrote: "The past few months here at Inflexion have been incredibly difficult and no words can express the sadness that we feel." "Like other studios in the past few years we have been hit with the harsh realities of the industry and after exploring all possible options, we've made the difficult decision to let some of our talented and remarkable team members go.

"While we are proud of the work we have done with Nightingale so far, as well as the enthusiasm and help from our community, we don't think that our early access release was commercially successful enough for us to continue development in our previous studio size. We're currently restructuring our studio in Canada and will be closing our UK branch.

Flynn did not say how many people were laid off, but it sounded like the cuts were significant. Guillaume Leroy, the lead art tools programmer at Inflexion Games, said in a LinkedIn post that "like the majority of Inflexion's employees, I am no more part of the studio." Others, such as lead game tools programmer Theo K. and software engineer LoicLeinot, as well narrative editor SharayahPiercey, have also posted that "many people" were let go. Inflexion confirmed to PC Gamer that a "dozen" employees were affected by layoffs.

I thought Nightingale's 'Mary Poppins-meets-Stargate' approach to open-world survival looked genuinely interesting, but it ran headlong into server problems at launch, which dragged its user rating down to a less-than-appealing "mixed" on Steam. Inflexion, despite initially insisting on its vision for the interconnected realms of the game, quickly changed course to create an offline mode that went live in May. The offline mode was well received, but had no real impact on player numbers.

Tom Avis, a former senior audio designer, wrote in a LinkedIn post that the layoffs were a sign that Nightingale was over. He said, "It is painful that we could not see the game to its final form. But I hope players enjoy the early-access version, as there are many things we can be proud of." Inflexion responded to the tweet with a statement that development would continue and news about future updates would be released soon.