Gravity Well, the Studio Founded by Apex Legends Veterans, Lays Off Most of Its Team After Funding Falls Through

Another one, and this one stings in a particular way. Gravity Well — the independent studio founded by former Apex Legends developers, the kind of veteran-led team that was supposed to be the industry's good-news story — has laid off the majority of its staff after its funding fell through. More than 40 developers are out. The studio announced the cuts in a LinkedIn post on Tuesday from its three leaders, and the news was picked up Wednesday by GamesIndustry.biz. A much smaller team carries on. Whether the studio itself survives is now an open question its own leadership won't pretend to have answered.

Here's what happened, per the leadership statement reported by Inven Global: Gravity Well lost its funding partner over the summer. Since then, the studio has been hunting for a replacement — a new backer, a new deal, anything to keep the lights on and the team together. That search hasn't paid off. With the money running out, the only option left was the one nobody wanted: saying goodbye to the majority of the team. The statement is blunt about where things stand now — the studio keeps going with a skeleton crew while it keeps looking, but "given the current state of the industry our future is uncertain."

Credit where it's due: the transparency here is real. According to the statement, staff were told about the funding situation as it unfolded — nobody walked into this blind. Everyone understood that layoffs were the likely outcome if new money couldn't be found. "We take it seriously that the team has stuck with us throughout this process, hopeful that we could find a solution before funds ran out," the statement said. "We are truly sad that we couldn't get it done in time to keep the team together." That's a leadership team owning the outcome instead of hiding behind it, and in an industry where layoff announcements often arrive as surprise calendar invites, it matters.

The part of the statement addressed directly to the departing developers is the part worth reading twice. "Know that you are appreciated and that this isn't a result of your skillset or ability," it said. "We are heartbroken to be sending you out into this job market." And then the ask that actually does something: the studio's leadership asked other companies to consider Gravity Well's former developers when they apply for roles. They are "amazing," the leaders stated, and "would make any development team stronger," adding that the team would deeply miss working alongside them every day. That's not boilerplate. That's three executives spending their own reputational capital on their people on the way out the door.

To understand why this one lands differently, you have to understand who Gravity Well was. The studio was founded in 2020 by Drew McCoy and Jon "Slothy" Shiring after they left Respawn Entertainment — the Apex Legends studio — with a stated goal of shaking things up in AAA game development. McCoy served as CEO and executive producer, Shiring as CTO, and Mon Saetern as COO. This was the classic veteran-breakaway story: proven developers, battle-tested on one of the biggest live-service games on the planet, striking out on their own to build something new without the corporate overhead. The industry loves this narrative. It almost never survives contact with the funding market.

And that may be the cruelest detail in the whole story: after six years of work, Gravity Well never shipped a game. Details on the project were never made public. Whatever McCoy, Shiring, and their team were building — whatever those 40-plus developers spent years of their careers on — the public never saw a trailer, a screenshot, or a title. It exists now only in the memories of the people who made it and the hard drives of a studio that might not be around much longer. As Insider Gaming noted in its reporting, with the studio's future in question, those details may soon come to light — but "may" is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

The wider context is the part nobody in games needs explained anymore. This lands amid continued upheaval across game development, with significant job losses at major studios still rolling through the industry years after the post-pandemic correction began. Even the adjacent stories carry the same whiplash: Insider Gaming's own coverage this week notes that furloughed developers on Star Wars: Zero Company — the EA-published tactics game from Bit Reactor — are returning to work, a rare reversal in a year defined by cuts. Gravity Well didn't get a reversal. It got a LinkedIn post and a smaller team and an honest admission that the future is uncertain.

There's a structural story underneath the human one, and it's worth saying plainly: the independent AAA studio is becoming a nearly impossible business to run. The math doesn't work anymore — development costs keep climbing, funding has dried up across the industry, publishers are risk-averse, and the middle has completely fallen out of the market. You're either a tiny indie team that can survive on a hit, or you're inside a giant publisher. Gravity Well tried to be the third thing: an independent team with AAA ambitions, funded by partners, building something big on someone else's money. When the partner walked away, there was no floor underneath them. Six years of work, veteran leadership, transparent communication, a team that stuck around hoping for a solution — and none of it mattered, because the money stopped.

What happens now is the grim, familiar part. A much smaller team keeps the studio alive while the search for a new partner continues. Forty-plus developers — people the studio's own leadership calls amazing, people whose only failing was working for a company that ran out of money — are on the job market in an industry that has been shedding jobs for years. The leadership's public ask for other companies to hire them is the right move, and it's worth repeating here: if you're hiring game developers, there are 40-plus proven ones available right now, vouched for by the Apex Legends veterans who led them. In a week full of indie showcases celebrating what's next in games, it's worth remembering what the industry keeps losing — and how little of it is the developers' fault.