Niantic cancels already announced Transformers game and lays off some staff

Game company Niantic cancels the already announced game Heavy Metal AR, a Transformers game. The game should have been released last year, but was already delayed. Niantic is canceling three more projects and laying off eight percent of its staff.

Transformers: Heavy Metal

Niantic is facing a ‘time of economic turmoil’ and therefore has to scrap the projects, writes Bloomberg† The company announced the Transformers game a year ago. It should have been released in the course of last year, but now the project has been cancelled.

Another canceled project is Hamlet, which Niantic made together with Punchdrunk† That was already announced. The other two projects had not yet been announced. They were called Snowball and Blue Sky, but there are no details about that.

Niantic will also lay off 85 to 90 of its approximately 1,100 employees. That’s about eight percent of the workforce. The company confirms the information, which Bloomberg knows because it has access to an internal email from the CEO. Niantic says it will continue to work on Pokémon Go and the NBA game All World announced this week.