Sega announced that they “have decided to implement structural reforms aimed at increasing efficiency, mainly at our European bases and reviewed the title portfolio in those bases”, which resulted in the cancellation of multiple titles.
This affected Sega Europe, with the team-based extraction shooter Hyenas getting cancelled, alongside several announced projects.
In the report, Sega cites these changes are a response to the current change of the business environments, as stay-at-home demand (as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic) has lessen, inflation causing economic downturn in Europe as well as the low profitability of its European operations.
Developers of Hyenas, Creative Assembly, later has confirmed that Hyenas, which just received a closed beta test at the end of September, is cancelled. And as a result, the development team will be impacted by redundancies. Layoffs.
It sucks to see individuals losing their jobs.
Creative Assembly was making a game that is outside of their usual wheelhouse with Hyenas, the studio is mostly known for the Total War strategy game series. Whether or not Hyenas was destined to be next live service game with a dedicated fanbase or another ill-fated attempt of such, we never know.