Worker-owned indie studio KO_OP lays off 13 staff amid funding drought
KO_OP, the worker-run studio behind Goodbye Volcano High and Young Suns, has cut 13 roles, blaming a collapse in indie funding.
AI-drafted from 1 source. This story was written with AI from the outside reporting listed under Sources, and checked by automated tools before it went up. The originals have the full detail.
KO_OP, the worker-run studio behind Goodbye Volcano High and the multiplayer life sim Young Suns, has laid off 13 employees. The cuts, confirmed by the studio itself, land squarely in the ongoing wave of layoffs battering small independent developers.
KO_OP is not a conventional studio. It describes itself as worker-run, meaning staff have a direct say in how the company is governed, including decisions like this one. According to the report in Game Developer, the studio announced the layoffs in a post on Bluesky, framing the decision as a matter of survival rather than ambition. “The games funding landscape has changed radically over the last few years, and unlike previous project cycles, this time we have been unable to secure funding for new projects while developing our current engagements,” the post reads.
Why a democratic studio still has to make cuts
The detail that stands out here is process. KO_OP says the decision to cut jobs was made democratically, in keeping with how it runs every operational choice, and that members were kept informed of the studio's cash flow well before the shortfall hit. That is a notable contrast with the way layoffs are usually announced elsewhere in the industry, often as a terse line in a corporate filing with no warning to staff. It does not, however, make the outcome any less severe. Game Developer reports that team leads and elected executives are among those affected, meaning the cuts reached into the studio's own governance structure, not just junior roles.
KO_OP has also pledged that any profits from Young Suns, which shipped on Xbox and is due on further platforms, will continue to be shared with the team members who lost their jobs. That commitment matters for a worker-owned outfit, where profit sharing is meant to be part of the deal, not a perk that evaporates the moment someone is let go.
What happens next is unclear
KO_OP says it is now focused on developing new projects and prototypes while continuing to support Young Suns, and has pledged to rehire as many people as possible if it secures funding in the coming months. What that funding might look like, who might provide it, or how many of the 13 could realistically return, is not addressed in the studio's statement, and Game Developer's report does not speculate either. Nor is it clear how many staff remain at KO_OP after the cuts, or what the new projects and prototypes actually are.
The wider picture is grim reading for anyone following independent development. KO_OP's layoffs arrive amid a broader run of cuts across small and mid-sized studios, part of what the industry has taken to calling a funding drought: publishers and platform holders pulling back on new deals, investors more risk-averse, and even studios with a shipped, played, apparently viable game struggling to greenlight the next one. For a studio built explicitly around shared decision-making and shared upside, that drought does not spare anyone, however the company is structured internally. The mechanism for cutting costs looks different. The costs themselves do not.
Sources
- Worker-run studio KO_OP confirms layoffs (Game Developer)
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