Heart Machine To End Development On Sweet Baby Inc. Infected 'Hyper Light Breaker' And Layoff More Employees
Heart Machine, the developer of the Sweet Baby Inc. infected Hyper Light Breaker announced it will be ending development on the game in January as well as laying off more employees who will become redundant.
A spokesman informed Game Developer that development on the game will cease in January and a significant portion of the company’s employees will be laid off.
“As we wrap up our work on Hyper Light Breaker, we’ve had to make the difficult decision to part ways with a number of talented team members. This was not our ideal path, but rather the only one available given the circumstances,” the spokesman stated.
“While this path will include a conclusion on the project, it reflects broader forces beyond our control, including shifts in funding, corporate consolidation and the uncertain environment many small studios like us are navigating today.”
That conclusion is expected to arrive in January, “We still have something coming in January. We plan to deliver something meaningful and as polished and complete as we can given our current circumstances. We’re doing our best to refine what we can, complete key systems, and have the game culminate in a satisfying punctuation point.”
The studio is not completely shutting down but will have a “smaller core team” to continue developing games.
This announcement comes about a year after it was reported that the company “dismissed a ‘portion’ of its workforce, although its unclear which departments this has affected.”
Additionally, it comes after the company launched a Patreon in order to keep the company afloat. The company’s Founder and Creative Director Alex Preston said at the time, “Over the past two years, the industry has rapidly changed, flipped around and turned upside down. Funding for new projects is sparse even for successful developers. Everything is far more expensive to make. Paths we used to be able to take to create projects no longer exist.”
“You’ve likely heard about this on some front. It’s grim. 30% of all games developers have either been laid off or had their roles significantly reduced or affected over the past year alone,” he shard. “Studios have closed. Many have left. And we at Heart Machine are not immune, having gone through layoffs in November of this year.”
Next, he shared specifically why he and the company are launching the Patreon, “Since the old models are not enough, we have to adapt. So we’re asking for support to help us continue to not just survive, but adapt and thrive. To help us prototype and build new projects, to help support us when the state of the industry has made it so much harder to exist.”
“Ever since we got started back in the Kickstarter days, we’ve been big on talking to our audience. And we think this Patreon is an opportunity for us to do more on this front while also benefitting.”
Hyper Light Breaker was added to the Sweet Baby Inc. detected Steam curator group given Sweet Baby Inc. revealed it had worked on the game in regards to world building, story, story structure, and character development.
After releasing in January 2025, the game hit a peak concurrent player count of just 5,230. Most recently, the game hit a 24-hour peak of just 22 players.
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Aww, how sad. Never let your game get that Sweet Baby Stink.
And how many of these studios who've had lay-offs have put out ideologically infected games in the last 5-10 years? Many in the industry have brought this upon themselves and still refuse to acknowledge responsibility. It's easier to make non-sense claims like "fatigue" and or "a changing landscapes'" any of a number of classic lies companies use to excuse the real cause for their downfall.
When was the last time you saw the CEO of a company admit "We screwed up and made the wrong call"? They don't do accountability in the corporate executive world.