The Unknown 9 franchise was canceled because the developer admits that the game “did not live up to” expectations and the series “did not warrant any further exploration.”

The studio behind Assassin’s Creed and Tomb Raider’s bold transmedia attempt, Unknown 9, has signaled the end of the franchise, following the poor performance of last year’s initial video game.

Unknown 9: Awakening, a generic globe-trotting adventure starring Anya Chalotra from the TV series The Witcher, “did not come close to the company’s expectations,” developer Reflector Entertainment’s head Herve Hoerdt said in a statement today, ” and does not justify any further exploration in this universe.” Oh.

One of Reflector’s two future projects, presumably another Unknown 9 game that was in the “conceptualization phase,” has been canceled, Hoerdt added. Therefore, this means that the studio was “putting an end to this line of development.”

“This decision directly correlates to the failure of the studio’s ambitious and brave first project, a new IP with a rich transmedia universe,” Hoerdt continued.

Reflector had ambitious plans for Unknown 9 as an ongoing series, supported by podcasts, comics, novels, and several web series. While many of these have already been released, some before Awakening itself, following a long video game delay, none seem to have made a real impression.

Reflector will now undergo a second round of layoffs, following previous job losses reported in November 2024, as the company scales back to a “single project approach that the studio will adopt for the imminent future.”

This project is an “existing Bandai Namco IP” and “is taking good shape,” Hoerdt concluded.