UK-based games developer Lionhead appears to be going the way of the way of the Sierra. According to the General Manager at Microsoft Studios Europe Hanno Lemke (who made the announcement on the official Xbox website), the latest game in the polarizing “Fable” franchise, “Fable Legends”, has ceased development, and mass layoffs at the studio which developed it are being considered. According to UK law, any business that considers the layoff of more than 20 employees first has to attempt another option, such as retraining or transfers. Regardless, it is incredibly likely that, layoffs or not, Lionhead Studios will cease to exist in the following months.

The studio was originally helmed by controversial developer Peter Molyneux, who is infamous among the gaming community for making grandiose promises that couldn’t possibly be kept with current technology, which often backfires and results in lower sales of his games despite their generally good quality. Once the fogs of hype dissipated, “Fable” and “Fable 2” started being regarded as two very good RPGs, and yet their successor “Fable 3” was a critical and commercial failure, and even today most gamers agree that it’s objectively bad and tarnishes the legacy of the series, to the point where there is an internet meme which involves pretending that it doesn’t exist. Following the failure of “Fable 3” Peter Molyneux left the studio in order to found an independent one, 22cans, and Lionhead decided to focus on making spinoffs based on the Fable property rather than “Fable 4”, which included “Fable: The Journey” and the aforementioned “Fable Legends”. The latter was supposed to be the franchise’s foray into Free to Play gaming in the vein of “League of Legends” or “Dota”, being developed all the way into a closed beta before being canceled, likely due to polarizing opinions among testers.

Lionhead isn’t the only studio that Microsoft is planning on euthanizing, though. Denmark’s Press Play Studios, which were responsible for smaller games such as “Max: The Curse of Brotherhood” and “Kalimba”, will also be shutting its doors soon, leading to the cancellation of their latest game, “Project Knoxville”. The reasons as to why this studio is shutting down are very much the same as those related to Lionhead’s closure – the last few games made by it underperformed. While both were good games that enjoyed critical success, neither sold particularly well, and the premise of “Project Knoxville” was probably too costly to allow Microsoft to keep supporting the studio. “Project Knoxville” was supposed to be an online survival game very similar to “The Hunger Games” which, while an amazing concept with lots of potential, probably cost too much for a moderately successful developer to remain financially stable. There’s nothing much we can do other than wish the employees well and hope that their next endeavors will be more successful.