Armello studio lays off over half its staff and 'indefinitely' pauses development on its ongoing early access game because 'almost all funding and investment has evaporated from the videogame industry

Apparently any further sales of the game will have a cut going to even the staff that was laid off.

That's commendable, but overall this is still an unfortunate development. I wonder if microtransactions in big games like apex and genshin are down this year? Is this an overall trend, or are people choosing to spend on one game, foregoing titles like Jumplight Odyssey for bigger spending on one (arguably less deserving) game.

It's sad, but I think that the massive explosion of really high-quality smaller games means there's ultimately less money to go around from buyers, all at the same time as big companies are consolidating funding into a few big-name series.

Anode Heart, Moonstone Island, Spirittea, My Time at Sandrock, Empty Shell, Quasimorph, Fae Farm, Sunkenland, Black Skylands, Techtonica, The Leviathan's Fantasy, Forever Skies, Ghostlore, Roots of Pacha, Stranded: Alien Dawn, Homestead Arcana, Terra Nil, Sifu, Industries of Titan...

All of those released this year. That's a LOT of really good small games (and that's just from the games I got), even if they're not all technically indie. I personally LOVE space games, as well as colony/group management sims, but Jumplight Odyssey just didn't feel like my vibe, sadly.

This is the first I've heard of Jumplight Odyssey. It looks potentially cool, but $30 for an early access title is a big ask in a year completely saturated with banger games, and based on the reviews it seems to need a bit more time before it is really ready. I'm not surprised, then, that it didn't do as well as they hoped: if they hadn't just announced that they're stopping development, I would have put it on my wishlist to come back to in a year or two when it's feature-complete, and when hopefully I'm not in the middle of so many other games already. If that's a typical response, they probably didn't get many sales.

For anyone who.ließ the setting, check out the Anime Spacebattleship Yamato 2199. It's fairly recent and there's an older one as well. This game is highly inspired by it.

Well that's annoying. This is the first time I hear about this game and it looks kinda good. I hope the studio can turn around and restart development at some point

That's unfortunate, I was honestly looking forward.to this