The developers of Hyper Light Breaker are ending development on the game and laying off a number of employees at the studio.
First reported by Game Developer, Heart Machine has confirmed its plans to wrap up the game’s development. However, they didn’t confirm how many people would be losing their jobs.
“As we wrap up our work on Hyper Light Breaker, we’ve had to make the difficult decision to part ways with a number of talented team members,” a Heart Machine spokesperson told the outlet. “This was not our ideal path, but rather the only one available given the circumstances.
“While this path will include a conclusion on the project, it reflects broader forces beyond our control, including shifts in funding, corporate consolidation and the uncertain environment many small studios like us are navigating today.”
As far as that “conclusion on the project” is concerned, the studio says it still has something planned for the game in January that will be “meaningful and as polished and complete” as they can.
“We’re doing our best to refine what we can, complete key systems, and have the game culminate in a satisfying punctuation point,” they said. “Given our limited resources with team members rolling off the project, we won’t be releasing any more updates or hosting any Q+As for the rest of this year. We want to make sure the team can focus fully on getting this next release into the best shape possible.”
Hyper Light Breaker, a prequel to 2016’s critically acclaimed Hyper Light Drifter, launched in January 2025 in Early Access to generally mixed reviews.
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Mike has been covering the gaming industry since 2012, and has reported on some of the largest events in the industry while also working as an investigative reporter. Outside of…
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