Less than two months after releasing the first (and last) story expansion DLC for The Callisto Protocol, developer Striking Distance Studios laid off 32 employees.

As VGC noted, the layoffs only became apparent after numerous employees reported being laid off from the studio. Krafton, Striking Distance's parent company, subsequently confirmed to IGN that a total of 32 employees had been laid off. This is not a small percentage of the studio's total workforce, which currently has 144 employees, according to Striking Distance's "about us" page.

"Striking Distance Studios and Crafton have implemented strategic changes to realign studio priorities to ensure the success of current and future projects. Unfortunately, these changes affected 32 employees." It is our top priority to honor the invaluable contributions of each departing member by providing material support in the form of outplacement services and meaningful severance packages during this difficult time."

The layoffs come less than a year after the release of The Callisto Protocol, the first game in the Dead Space-like survival horror game Striking Distance, which appeared in December 2022 and made a reasonably good impression It was a game that broke new ground. While not breaking new ground, we said in our 79% review that it was "an engaging, linear sci-fi survival horror that weaves a deepening dystopian yarn around dozens of stressful encounters."

Unfortunately, launch-day performance issues fueled an ugly backlash on Steam, and while the problems were resolved fairly quickly, the evidence remains: Callisto Protocol still has a "mixed" rating with nearly 24,000 user reviews.

But sales of The Callisto Protocol were an even bigger problem: In January, publisher Krafton revised its forecast sharply downward, from 5 million copies sold to just 2 million, admitting that even achieving that low number was "not easy." 2 million copies figure does not sound like a huge failure, but Krafton said at the time that he had spent more than $161 million on "The Callisto Protocol" over the past three years and would need to sell several million more copies to recoup that investment.

The final nail in the coffin may have been the release of The Callisto Protocol: the Final Transmission DLC was released in June. This DLC also has a "mixed" user rating on Steam, with far fewer actual reviews than the base game: currently, just over 500 people have bothered to rate it.