Yellow Brick Games lays off staff months after Eternal Strands launch

Yellow Brick Games, the studio behind Eternal Strands, has begun laying off staff. The scale of the cuts is not yet known, but several employees have confirmed their departures via LinkedIn.

Among those who have publicly shared the news are Senior Environment Artist Derian McCrea, Graphics Engineer Adam Clapsaddle, Software Programmer Rebecca Bélanger, QA Lead Jessica Chapados Arseneault, and Senior Level Designer Julien Tonsuso. The total number of affected staff is unclear, and Yellow Brick Games has not yet commented — Rock Paper Shotgun reached out but had not received a response at time of publication.

Yellow Brick Games was co-founded in 2020 by Mike Laidlaw, the original creative director on Dragon Age, alongside several former Ubisoft developers. The studio had around 68 people as of April 2024. Eternal Strands, an action-adventure RPG, was their debut game — self-published and released in January 2025, with a free DLC expansion following in April. The layoffs arrive less than six months after that DLC dropped.

The news lands in the middle of a brutal stretch for the games industry. Ninja Theory and Supermassive Games both reported layoffs in the same week, and Microsoft recently cut around 3,200 workers across multiple studios. The pattern of recurring, industry-wide job losses shows no sign of slowing.