Personality Space, an independent studio founded by State of Decay creator Jeff Strain, has officially shut down, and several employees have since come out to announce their layoffs.
Additionally, according to a company-wide email shared on X by Polygon senior reporter Nicole Carpenter on Friday, Strain blames the employees for leaking information to the press as the reason for the studio’s closure.
In the email, Strain states that he was “stunned to see non-public information about Project Vonnegut,” the studio’s in-development title at the time, mentioned in an unpublished Kotaku article by Ethan Gach. The email also notes the information included “disclosure of [the studio’s] publishing partner with details of [its] business and financial relationship and details of internal P&L and confidential all-company meetings.” Strain said that following this, the studio’s publishing partner “expressed low confidence that they would be willing to invest the additional resources needed to complete the game, so we mutually agreed to cancel Vonnegut.”
Although the article in question has not yet been published, Strain asserts that the information it contains led to the termination of the publishing relationship, which in turn precipitated the closure of both Personality Space and Prytania Media, and that “Mr Gach specifically credits current employees as the source of his information.”
It’s worth noting that Prytania Media has been struggling in recent months as it saw a string of layoffs, and its development studio, Crop Circle Games, was shut down almost three years after it was established. Interestingly, Annie Delisi Strain, Jeff’s wife and previous co-CEO of Prytania Media, stated that the closures resulted from the steady decline of the gaming industry and the company’s lack of funding.
This was stated in a letter on the Crop Circle Games website, which is no longer available. The message, as shared by IGN, also mentions the Kotaku article and claims that Gach could have potentially disclosed her multiple sclerosis diagnosis without her prior permission. ”While I don’t know the content of Mr. Gach’s article,” She said, “I have no assurances that my personal health struggles as a rare female game industry CEO will not be covered in his article.”
Possibility Space was founded in 2021 and was reportedly developing a new AAA title. Despite being established almost three years ago, the studio did not publish a single game.
Prytania Media has gone through significant changes over the last few months, which its CEOs have attributed to several reasons, and it’s clear the company has been dealing with issues for quite some time.
