On April 12th, 2024, Possibility Space staff received an email from the studio’s owner Jeff Strain. In the email, Strain detailed that due to alleged leaks of miscellaneous confidential information from internal staff to Ethan Gach, a reporter at Kotaku, investors withdrew from supporting Possibility Space.
Thus, the email was also a layoff notice email detailing as such:
“Your final paycheck including pay for work through the end of today will be deposited to your account, along with any other required payments, as dictated by your work location. For employees located outside the United States, today will serve as the first day of your Notice Period and your final day of employment is currently scheduled for April 19, 2024.”
In the email, Strain also noted that the closure of Possibility Space marked the start of his stepping away from the game industry to focus on his family.
Possibility Space was formed in 2021 as a studio with many industry veterans. Strain himself was the original programmer on World of Warcraft. The goal of the studio was to dismantle the idea that AAA games lacked ambition. Thus, Strain declared the studio was to work on an AAA game with the innovation and creativity usually only expected for indie games.
Possibility Space is not the first indie studio to be dissolved in 2024. Others such as fully remote studio Eggnut, known for their noir game Backbone (2021) or Copenhagen based studio Die Gute Fabrik – who just released Saltsea Chronicles (2023) under half a year ago – announced indefinite hiatuses of the studios due to funding issues. In fact, in the email, Strain mentioned how Gach was writing about the closure of Crop Circle Games, another studio hit with closure earlier this year.
A few days after the announcement, the Possibility Space website was scrubbed clean. With the dissolution of the company, the employees had to go to social media sites such as X to declare their layoffs. Strain himself turned over legalities to a law firm, effectively severing his presence in the aftermath.