16-Year-Old Studio Shutting Down After Client Reportedly Refused To Pay

Puny Human, a developer formed in 2007 that made Dystopia and Blade Symphony and contributed to a number of high-profile games, is closing down for good. The company will lay off all remaining full-time staff by the end of the year and is taking steps to liquidate assets and sell off select IP. The company will make some of its products open-source. This is happening in part because of a contract dispute.

Puny Human employed 20 full-time staff. Losing the team and the company is "heartbreaking," CEO and studio manager Mike Sanders said. "A client refused previously agreed-upon payments, which deprived us of the cash flow to fully pitch" an in-progress game. This led to "successive failures in our operating income," Sanders said.

"I take full responsibility for not sufficiently preparing for this outcome," the CEO explained.

Since 2016, Puny operated as an "outside development vendor" and worked alongside other studios on games like The Callisto Protocol, Trover Saves the Universe, Bard's Tale IV, and Tribes of Midgard.

In 2018, Puny started worked on a spiritual successor to Dystopia, called Zero Day, and the aim was to obtain funding from an unspecified venture capital partner in Q2 of 2023.

The identity of the client whom Puny claims did not pay remains unknown. In the remainder of 2023, Puny will attempt to release the source code for "some of its early projects" and sell its remaining IP.

The impending closure of Puny is just the latest piece of difficult news for the games industry in a year marked with studio closures and mass layoffs. Saints Row studio Volition shut it doors earlier this year as did Mimimi not long after it released an acclaimed game. Epic Games just laid off nearly 900 people, while Relic also cut many positions earlier this year. The Last of Us developer Naughty Dog is eliminating jobs, too.