FuturLab has laid off seven employees after cancelling a project unrelated to PowerWash Simulator, CEO Kirsty Rigden confirmed in a statement to This Week in Video Games.

The cancelled title was in pre-production. "It would have cost us more than it was projected to make," Rigden said. "Continuing with it wouldn't have been a sensible decision."

Anonymous sources told the outlet that the project had been in development for two to three years before Rigden announced its cancellation in late June. The seven affected employees were reportedly made redundant in July.

What changes for the studio?

FuturLab now operates as a single-project studio. Rigden said the company is "fully committed to making [PowerWash Simulator 2] the best game it can be, while prototyping new ideas for future games," and that the cancellation and layoffs "meant looking at our future plans and requirements for the studio."

The decision reverses the studio's stated two-project strategy. GamesIndustry.biz previously spoke to Rigden about what was next for FuturLab, when the now-cancelled project was still part of the plan. "We've always tried to do two projects at once… so we've got another game which I'm really excited about," she said at the time. "We don't want to just be a PowerWash studio... We're always thinking about, 'What else could we do?'"

For the seven affected staff, the studio says the cuts will not slow work on PowerWash Simulator 2. Employees were reportedly told the departing staff were not needed for the sequel and that their departure would not impact the game's development.

How was the process handled?

Reporting from This Week in Video Games, citing anonymous sources, paints a picture of an opaque internal process:

• Project staff were allegedly "left hanging with no new work assigned to them for weeks" after the cancellation.
• Managers and team leads reportedly learned of the redundancies only after the fact — sources claimed they "were not informed that their direct reports were going to be away or why."
• At an August meeting, COO Chris Mehers reportedly described the changes as a restructuring.
• In a subsequent meeting, employees were instructed not to use the term "redundancy" and to refer to those affected as "the leavers."

Sources also alleged that managers and team leads were deliberately excluded from selecting who would be cut, "not to give them any of the guilt," and that this approach was intended to avoid "the stress of [those affected] not knowing their job security for two weeks of the process."

When asked whether FuturLab could confirm the employees were let go through redundancy, Rigden said she was "unable to divulge any further details about a confidential and legally binding process."

What did the CEO say about the layoffs?

Rigden acknowledged the human cost directly. "This is awful as these are people who are super talented and many of whom have been with us a long time, and I really really appreciate them," she said. "This was not an easy or quick decision to make, but by making difficult decisions early we protect FuturLab in the future."

The framing matches a broader pattern across the industry: studios cutting second projects before they reach full production to concentrate resources on a proven franchise, then absorbing headcount reductions in teams built around the cancelled title.

FuturLab has not announced a release date for PowerWash Simulator 2, nor detailed how many of the studio's remaining staff are assigned to it versus early prototyping — a split worth watching as the studio's first post-layoff milestones arrive.