The creators of Myst couldn't secure financing for a new game in the franchise despite spending four months building a fully playable demonstration and pitching it to more than a dozen publishers, according to a report published by WIRED last week. Cyan Worlds, the oldest surviving independent game studio in America, was seeking between $1 million and $10 million to complete Anglerfish, a darker chapter where players are held captive in a strange world. The project died after months without funding commitments, forcing the studio to shelve the game and lay off 12 employees—roughly half its workforce.
Cyan presented Anglerfish at last year's Game Developers Conference and the Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain (D.I.C.E) Summit, where the studio's recent remake of Riven: The Sequel to Myst received a nomination for a D.I.C.E. Award for Outstanding Achievement in Game Direction. The demonstration featured a stunning performance by Noshir Dalal, known for his work in Red Dead Redemption 2, Horizon Forbidden West, and Ghost of Yōtei, using voice acting and motion capture. Reactions to the trailer released last week were enthusiastic on YouTube. The original Myst sold more than 6 million copies in the 1990s and held the title of bestselling PC game of all time until 2002, when The Sims broke the record.
"Even the publishers who felt passionate about the project couldn't get their higher-ups to let the money flow," says Eric A. Anderson, creative director and co-studio head at Cyan Worlds. John Eternal, the former global lead of partner development at PlayStation who assisted Cyan in pitching Anglerfish, says "funding for double-A games has evaporated." The report notes that most publishers received the demo positively, yet Cyan returned from the conferences without any funding agreements and soon put Anglerfish on hold.
Video games are experiencing a middle-market collapse similar to what's happening with movies and books, the report explains. So-called triple-A studios like Rockstar, Naughty Dog, and Bungie routinely invest more than $200 million to develop and market a single game, while micro-indie studios typically spend less than $1 million. Last year's indie darling Blue Prince, inspired by Myst, was financed by its solo developer's personal savings and ad revenue from his Magic: The Gathering website. Between these extremes, there used to be a robust double-A studio ecosystem where games received substantial funding from publishers like Private Division, Adult Swim Games, and EA Originals. Doug North Cook, CEO and creative director at Creature, a publisher-developer hybrid, says "the space between $2 million to $15 million has become very difficult for most developers." Xbox Game Pass, PlayStation, and publisher funding previously supported that middle tier, but most publishers have shifted toward much smaller budgets, the report states.
The funding drought for mid-budget games leaves studios that can't compete at the triple-A scale with few viable paths beyond self-funding or drastically scaling down ambitions. Blue Prince developer Tonda Ros only approached publishers after completing his game independently, seeking marketing, porting, and release support rather than development financing. The collapse of the double-A funding tier means established studios with decades of history and proven franchises face the same financing challenges as first-time creators. Studios caught in this middle tier must either abandon projects that don't fit micro-indie budgets or accept that even passionate publishers can't navigate internal approval processes for mid-range investments—a structural shift that reshapes which types of games can get made and which creative visions remain unrealized.