Bandai Namco is liquidating Unknown 9: Awakening studio Reflector Entertainment, following multiple previous layoffs since the game's launch

As another addition to the slew of smaller studios being dissolved by their parent companies, Bandai Namco announced in a press release that they are shutting down their subsidiary studio Reflector Entertainment, a Montreal studio responsible for 2024's action-adventure game Unknown 9: Awakening. In its notice, Bandai Namco explains that the reason for the liquidation is due to Reflector not meeting its expectations for "future business plans, necessary additional investment, and the possibility of profitability and business continuation."

The press release notes that the liquidation of Reflector will result in an estimated "extraordinary loss" of around 21 million euros, or 3.5 billion yen, for Bandai Namco in its Q3 fiscal report of this year. This is not the first time Reflector has been cut by Bandai, as around a month after the launch of Unknown 9: Awakening and presumably in response to its low sales, 18% of the workforce was laid off. 2025 then saw further redundancies amidst the cancellation of a prospective project, though details on those layoffs were not granted by the company. Unknown 9 was intended to be a transmedia franchise involving the game as well as comic books and novels, but these ambitions never came to pass.

Bandai Namco notes that the liquidation will be held to local laws and procedures, which make the actual schedule of the process uncertain for now. A similar process faces Arkane Lyon, which is currently in a purgatory of having been chosen for closure by Microsoft, but temporarily protected by French labor laws that prevent it from being suddenly closed without proper negotiation and procedure.