Penny’s Big Breakaway Studio Also Layoffs

Evening Star, the development studio behind the 3D platformer Penny’s Big Breakawayannounced that the current “turbulence” in the video game industry forced the dismissal of six employees. “This was a post I hoped I wouldn’t have to write, but Evening Star has been caught up in the same turbulence that has affected so many of our peers in the games industry over the past year and a half,” Dave Padilla, CEO and executive producer of Evening Star, wrote on LinkedIn.

“Despite our enormous efforts to secure another projectin order to keep the team together, we find ourselves in the unfortunate situation of having to lay off some of the people who have worked with us over the past few years on Penny’s Big Breakaway.”

“We didn’t want to make this decision, as these are all talented and irreplaceable people,” Hunter Bridges, chief technology officer and game director of Penny’s Big Breakaway, added in another post, saying the cuts were forced by “volatile market conditions in the video game industry” and the studio’s internal situation.

Penny’s Big Breakaway sold poorly?

Evening Star is an independent studio founded in 2018 from veterans from the Sonic Mania development team.

The legacy of that experience is clearly visible in Penny’s Big Breakaway, a excellent quality title that deserved more lucksince it wasn’t a huge success, at least according to the numbers visible on Steam, with a peak number of players reaching 563. It probably did better on consoles (it is available for Xbox Series X and S, PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch), but we doubt it made great results, considering the layoffs underway.