Polyarc, studio behind the Moss series, shuts down after 12 years

Polyarc Games, the Seattle studio behind the Moss VR series, announced it is shutting down on September 11, 2026, after nearly 12 years in operation. The closure was confirmed via a LinkedIn post, with the studio listing 29 team members — artists, designers, animators, engineers — and encouraging other developers to hire them.

Polyarc launched its first game, Moss, in 2018 — a VR action-adventure puzzle game starring a mouse named Quill that earned strong reviews, including an 8.5/10 from IGN. Moss: Book 2 followed in 2022 to similar praise, and 2023 brought Glassbreakers: Champions of Moss, a more tactical spin-off. Just two months before the closure, in July 2026, Polyarc released Moss: The Forgotten Relic — a non-VR remake of the first two games that also scored an 8/10 from IGN, which called it "an incredibly charming fairy tale" that doesn't feel compromised by leaving VR behind.

The shutdown is another blow in what has been a brutal year for the games industry. Bluepoint Games and Dark Outlaw Games were both closed by PlayStation earlier in 2026. Ubisoft shuttered several studios in June. Night School Studio — the Oxenfree developer — was closed by Netflix last month. Spiders, the studio behind GreedFall, shut down in April. Microsoft announced cuts of 3,200 staff in July. Polyarc's closure fits a grim pattern of mid-sized and specialist studios struggling to survive despite critical success.

"Working together over all of these years has been an honor," Polyarc wrote in its farewell post. "Our work is now finished." With Moss: The Forgotten Relic having just launched to positive reviews, the timing makes the closure all the more jarring for fans of the series.