The launch of a major PC and console game appears to have generated such poor sales that its developer is laying off nearly half of its employees just weeks after the game’s launch. The game in question is Immortals of AveumThe fantasy-themed first-person shooter from developer Ascendant Studios.

ribbed reports, via unnamed sources, that Ascendant has today laid off about 40 of its 80-100 staff members. The reason given was poor sales for Immortals of AveumLaunched on August 22nd for the PC, Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 platforms.

The game received mixed reviews from critics; Metacritic shows an Average review score of 70 (out of 100) for the title. The single-player only game certainly didn’t get many players on its PC version on Steam. God SteamDB website It currently shows about 71 gamers playing the game online right now.

In hindsight, the game, published by Electronic Arts, also suffered a bit with its release date, as it launched just a few weeks after the hit RPG Baldur’s Gate 3, and a few weeks before the highly anticipated Starfield launch.

To top it all off, Immortals of Aveum was one of the first third-party games to use Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5. The developer released its final PC hardware requirements for the game a few days before launch and they were definitely on the higher side.

Since its launch, Ascendant Released three patches to the game. The second patch included quite a few that were specific to the PC version, including the addition of three graphic settings (Mesh Pool Quality, Shadow Rendering Pool Size, Render Target Pool Size). The third update addressed some issues with the game’s use of NVIDIA’s DLSS features.

With today’s news of the layoffs, it is unknown if the game will continue to be updated.