Fae Farm and Dauntless developers Phoenix Labs have cut 34 jobs following an internal review. It’s a sad end to a busy year for the Canadian studio, who bought their independence back from previous owner Garena in February, and laid off 9 per cent of their workforce in May.

“After a rigorous review we made the decision to change the structure of our support teams, and we have made the tough decision to reduce our workforce by a total of 34 people, across our publishing, HR, IT, and shared services teams,” a representative told GI, after employees broke the news on LinkedIn.

“Our games teams were unaffected and our work continues across our titles at Phoenix Labs,” the statement continues. “Fae Farm’s DLC and Dauntless updates are on track, and we have exciting unannounced projects in the works.

“We thank each of the affected team members who have helped to build Phoenix Labs into what it is today. Their impact will be missed and live on through everything the studio does moving forward.”

Launched out of beta in 2019, Pheonix’s Dauntless is a stripped-down Monster Hunter homage that places less emphasis on grinding monster giblets – or at least, that was the case when I played one of the pre-release builds, a million years ago in 2017.

This year’s Fae Farm, similarly, is sort of Stardew Valley but less of a slog. “It’s slightly easier, in ways that seem small but cumulatively mean it takes up way less of your brain’s runtime on bad days,” Alice B wrote in September. There’s a big piece of DLC on the way on 14th December – Coasts of Croakia.

Back in May, Phoenix Labs justified the layoffs as necessary for “success and sustainability”, saying they would “focus on fewer development projects” in future. They’re far from the only studio to make significant headcount reductions this year: just last week, Embracer chopped around 50 positions at Chorus developer Fishlabs. It’s rumoured that TimeSplitters developer Free Radical are next.

Best of luck to all those affected.