Following a less-than-favourable financial report, Sega has announced the cancellation of several games – most of which were yet to be revealed. One of the most highly-anticipated games that Sega has shut down is HYENAS, a unique ‘heist extraction loot shooter’ that was supposed to be released this year, although it never had a confirmed date. This all-new title was in the middle of testing phases with its developer, Creative Assembly, before Sega sadly pulled the plug on it.

Unless someone inside Sega spills the beans, we’ll never know what the undisclosed games were. They could have been brand new IPs or they could have been expansions of franchises that have existed for some time – Sega is a sizeable firm with plenty of brands and labels under its umbrella, after all. Ultimately, something had to be done – in the latest financial reports, Sega predicts losses in the current fiscal year of almost $100 million.

Sega’s Shut Down Seals the Deal

Image Credit: Creative Assembly

HYENAS was a somewhat promising title, taking an established genre and flipping it on its head. It would have featured a collection of teams entering a spaceship-styled environment, looting to their heart’s content, and then making it out again with the ultimate prizes – before the other teams eliminated them. It was a hero shooter of sorts, too – every character boasted unique abilities that could turn the tide of battle at the drop of a hat.

It looked okay in early trailers, and it was, by all accounts, testing quite well:

It had plenty of humour, flashy explosions, and enough zero-gravity fights to keep players occupied for hours on end. It looked as though it’d be the kind of game that never went the same way twice, with a cacophony of abilities switching up the environment in unpredictable ways. It even featured crossover elements from other Sega franchises – in one video, we saw players hunting a Sonic the Hedgehog collectable item.

Related: The Games That Changed Us: Sonic The Hedgehog

But Was It All That Good?

Sadly, the consensus online was that Creative Assembly was ‘selling out’ with HYENAS. As one user on YouTube put it, HYENAS was ‘Sacrificing the ultimate entry in your flagship series to chase a trend and inevitably fail. Incredible move.’ In another comment, one user wrote ‘Yet another game that looks like it was built from the ground up to include a battle pass and premium cosmetics.’

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With sentiments like that echoing around the social space before the game had even hit the market, it’s little wonder Sega got cold feet. It was just a month ago that Creative Assembly was promoting the closed beta for HYENAS, and today, the game’s development has been completely cancelled and closed down. Sadly, following the news, it was also revealed that CA will ‘begin a redundancy consultation process’ that could result in job losses.

Given the recent spate of layoffs occurring across the industry, that too comes as no surprise.