WotC Skeleton Key game studio shut down?

[Alzrius]

Take this with a grain of salt, but there's apparently a rumor going around that Hasbro/WotC has shut down their Skeleton Key game studio:

Wizards of the Coast's Skeleton Key's AAA Game Gets Shut Down

The news arrives several weeks after the rumored addition of Dragon Age: The Veilguard's Game Director to the team.

80.lv

To excerpt the relevant portion of the article:

As said by Ait-Kaci in his recent LinkedIn post, first spotted by Timur222, Skeleton Key's in-progress game has been officially discontinued, with him and other developers facing "the same misfortune."

At this time, Skeleton Key's Audio Director appears to be the only person to publicly comment on the game's cancellation. The only other indication supporting Ait-Kaci's claim is that Skeleton Key's careers page shows a total of zero open positions – not definitive proof of the project's demise, but still unusual for a AAA game in its earliest stages of development. 80 Level has reached out to other team members to gather more details on the project's current status, the reasons behind its alleged shutdown, and WotC's plans for Skeleton Key going forward.

 

[mamba]

Do we know what they were working on?

 

[Alzrius]

Do we know what they were working on?

I'm not aware of any details, beyond that it was supposed to be a AAA video game.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Do we know what they were working on?

We know it was a horror-oriented AAA game, but that's all. Given some of the people involved, probably an RPG though.

The article's talk about "intrigue" shows they're not professional journalists and don't understand the game industry though, embarrassing for them. Hiring new leadership and letting most people working on a product go is pretty routine if a game is having issues severe enough to need to restart development. There's no "intrigue" to it, it's routine if the game isn't working out.

What will be interesting is if Skeleton Key does shut down, which if it happens would suggest SK tried to do that, but that WotC cut them off before they could actually restart development.

 

[SteveC]

I had August in the pool of when this would happen, thinking this announcement would coincide with Gen Con. I was too conservative!

Edited to add: the guy who won did the equivalent of saying "one dollar" on The Price is Right.