Romero Games, whose in-development shooter was cancelled last week in the wake of (but not necessarily as a result of, more on that later) the major layoffs at Microsoft, has issued a statement on social media clarifying that it is not closed down, and that “we are doing everything in our power to ensure that it does not come to that.”
Romero Games said on July 3 that funding for its project, a new FPS announced in 2022, had been cancelled, “along with several other unannounced projects at other studios.” The publisher went unnamed but given the bloodbath that had occurred at Microsoft the day before—9,000 people laid off, multiple games cancelled, one studio closed outright—the culprit seemed obvious.
The fate of Romero Games itself was also left unclear. The funding cancellation alluded to layoffs but made no specific mention of any cuts; multiple employees said they’d been laid off, however, and some said the entire team had been let go, effectively shuttering the studio.
But that’s apparently not the case, and there may even be some hope for the still-unnamed game to make a comeback. In a message shared to social media, Romero Games confirmed that funding for the game was pulled and it was cancelled as a result, but clarified that it is not closed.
“Any suggestion otherwise is factually incorrect,” Romero Games wrote. “Indeed, we were in the studio today to discuss next steps with the team.”
The studio also said it’s been contacted by several publishers about getting the game “across the finish line” and that it is now “evaluating those opportunities,” suggesting that the game is not really cancelled but more just in a state of no-money limbo.
Update (July 7, 2025)
— @romerogames.bsky.social (@romerogames.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-07-07T22:23:04.141Z
Reports of Romero Games’ closure may have been premature, but it was also understandable: More than one former employee said on social media that everyone had been let go, and the entire studio had been closed; one actually reposted a message claiming that Romero Games was up for sale. It’s all been muddled, but very bad no matter how you slice it, as reflected in the comment that “we now have to reassess the entire staffing of our studio.”
Employee comments on which publisher was responsible for pulling the funding seem more reliable: Romero Games said “confidentiality agreements” prevent it from naming names, but it’d be a hell of a coincidence if some other major publisher cut it off at the very same time as Microsoft’s most recent massacre. (The remark that “some may infer it from public information” is also pretty finger-on-nose.)
As for who might step in to save the day, that remains a mystery for the moment. It’s not terribly surprising that someone wants to step in: After all, ‘John and Brenda Romero want money to finish a new shooter they’ve already been working on for three years’ should be a pretty easy sell for anyone with sufficiently deep pockets. Hopefully we’ll have news on that, and good news for the studio’s staff, soon.
