Mighty Coconut, the indie studio behind Walkabout Mini Golf (2020), has announced that it will be cutting its workforce by 25%, in addition to increasing the prices of future DLC to offset costs.
Might Coconut founder Lucas Martell published a blog post outlining some of the challenges the studio faces in the admittedly “difficult” VR game development environment.
After layoffs that affected a quarter of the studio, Martel said the remaining team at Mighty Coconuts is now 27 people, which will allow the studio to “continue to expand the game for the foreseeable future.”
Walkabout Mini Golf fans have come to expect new course DLC to keep coming, and thankfully that’s not set to change. Martel said the studio is planning six annual courses instead of the usual seven.
However, what will change starting with the next release is that DLC prices will increase by $1, and new courses will have a new price of $5 instead of $4.
“As DLC complexity increases, we believe this is the most direct way to support development. All previously released courses will remain at their current prices,” Martel said.
The studio is also focusing more on the VR version available on Quest, SteamVR, PSVR 2, and Pico than the “Pocket Edition” for iOS.
“We want to support as many platforms and ways of playing as possible, but keeping a completely unique mobile version of the game in line with the VR platform is a monumental task that slows down production much more than we anticipated,” Martell explains. “We want cross-play between VR and mobile to continue to work as much as possible, but we plan to retire it at some point. When we do, we will definitely announce it in advance.”
Additionally, Mighty Coconut is scaling back the development of additional activities such as employee mode, chess, and slingshot.
“We know how popular these are and hope to have them back again soon, but it takes quite a bit of energy at the moment so we need to focus on other things,” Martel says.
Mighty Coconuts isn’t the only studio feeling the pressure. The industry as a whole has recently seen many VR studios close, downsize, and cancel projects.
Fellow XR indie Cloudhead Games (Pistol Whip) also recently experienced layoffs, affecting 70% of its staff, while Meta’s XR Reality Labs division reportedly had 10% of its staff laid off. This includes the closure of Sanzaru Games (Asgard’s Wrath), Armature Studio (Resident Evil 4 VR port), and Twisted Pixel (Deadpool VR).
Additionally, the Harry Potter VR game for Quest, which was supposed to be developed by Skydance Games, has also reportedly been canceled due to budget cuts. Sanzaru’s closure also led to the cancellation of the Batman: Arkham Shadows sequel.
