MercurySteam announces 'difficult and painful' job cuts as its God of War-inspired hack 'n' slash arrives on Steam
MercurySteam has announced job cuts coinciding with the Steam release of its game Blades of Fire, describing the layoffs as a 'difficult and painful' process. The studio did not disclose the number of affected employees or the reasons for the cuts, though poor sales of Blades of Fire may be a contributing factor. The game, previously an Epic Store exclusive, launched on Steam with a major update including new features and full Steam Deck support.
- ▪MercurySteam announced a workforce reduction without specifying the number of employees affected.
- ▪Blades of Fire, the studio's latest title, underperformed commercially, leading to an anticipated €8 million write-off by publisher 505 Games.
- ▪The game has now launched on Steam after a year of exclusivity on the Epic Store, featuring a 2.0 update with new modes, difficulty settings, and improved animations.
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| Original publisher | PC Gamer |
| Canonical URL | https://www.pcgamer.com/games/action/mercurysteam-announces-difficult-and-painful-job-cuts-as-its-god-of-war-inspired-hack-n-slash-arrives-on-steam/ |
| Publication time | Sat, 16 May 2026 14:00:00 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-16T14:10:18.705Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-16T14:10:18.705Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
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| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | k4sNyHxe9huc |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
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| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
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| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
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Games Action Blades of Fire MercurySteam announces 'difficult and painful' job cuts as its God of War-inspired hack 'n' slash arrives on Steam News By Rick Lane published 16 May 2026 The developer of Blades of Fire has initiated a "workforce adjustment process." When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. (Image credit: MercurySteam) Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter MercurySteam, the developer behind Castlevania: Lords of Shadow and the Switch exclusive Metroid Dread, has announced layoffs in the same week its latest game Blades of Fire launches on Steam."There's no easy…
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