FuturLab laid off 7 staff, cancelled unrevealed project, report says

PowerWash Simulator developer FuturLab laid off seven staff members and cancelled an unrevealed project earlier this year, according to a report from This Week In Videogames cited by Rock Paper Shotgun. CEO Kirsty Rigden announced the project's cancellation in June 2026, roughly two to three years after work on it began, sources said. Staff on the project were "left hanging with no new work being assigned to them for weeks," one source told the outlet, and managers were not told why their direct reports stopped coming to work.

In an August company meeting, COO Chris Mehers told staff the studio would undergo a redundancy process. In a following meeting, staff were told not to use the word "redundancy" and instead refer to affected workers as "the leavers." Staff were also told the layoffs were tied only to the cancelled project and would not affect PowerWash Simulator 2.

Rigden confirmed the cancellation in a statement, saying the non-PowerWash project was in pre-production and "would have cost us more than it was projected to make." She said seven people "have left the business" but did not confirm whether they were made redundant or left voluntarily.