Jeff Strain has a pretty impressive resume, co-founding both Guild Wars developer ArenaNet and State of Decay creators Undead Labs, but things don’t seem to be going as well for him lately. Today it emerged that Possibility Space, one of the new studios Strain has founded with his wife under the larger Prytania Media umbrella, is closing for a rather unusual reason.
According to an internal email acquired by Polygon’s Nicole Carpenter, Kotaku was preparing a story about Prytania Media, which recently closed another one of its studios, Crop Circle Games. It seems the Kotaku reporter had got their hands on a variety of information about Possibility Space’s current AAA project codenamed Project Vonnegut, which could only have been acquired by somebody internal leaking the details. Strain informed his publishing partner of this and they expressed “low confidence” that they’d be willing to fund the rest of the game’s development given the leaks. So, Project Vonnegut is cancelled and Possibility Space is shutting down immediately.
In a bizarre studio closure and layoff message to staff, Possibility Space owner Jeff Strain blamed the studio closure on employees leaking information to the press. pic.twitter.com/d4OHrm3z2N
— Nicole Carpenter (@sweetpotatoes) April 12, 2024
While no publishers like leaks, this is the first time that I can think of that a game has been so promptly canceled because of them. Of course, it does seem there are multiple issues at play – with Prytania Media also recently shutting Crop Circle Games (there were originally four studios under the umbrella) it’s clear Strain’s latest venture is hurting in general. Still, it seems like it was the leak that made him pull the trigger.
Another interesting wrinkle in this story is the unnamed “publishing partner.” While we don’t know for sure who was funding Project Vonnegut, back in 2021 generally-reliable Microsoft insider Jez Corden claimed Xbox was funding something called Project Vonnegut. The game’s codename does follow Xbox’s usual naming scheme (“Project” followed by some sort of evocative second word) and, of course, Microsoft worked with Strain on State of Decay. If Xbox was indeed Project Vonnegut’s backer, this cancelation follows a number of other cuts at Microsoft’s gaming division as the Xbox Series X/S struggles and they seem to be reorienting around third-party publishing.
As part of his internal email announcing the Possibility Space closure, Jeff Strain says he’s “stepping away from the game industry” so it seems likely the remaining Prytania studios will also be wound down.
