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Bandai Namco is shutting down Reflector Entertainment, the Montreal studio behind 2024 action-adventure Unknown 9: Awakening. The board of parent company Bandai Namco Holdings approved dissolving and liquidating the subsidiary on November 10.
Reflector was set up in December 2015 and joined Bandai Namco in 2020, sitting under Bandai Namco Entertainment Europe, which owns all of its shares. Unknown 9: Awakening, which launched in October 2024 on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and PC, turned out to be the only game it shipped under the publisher.
Why Bandai Namco is pulling the plug
The decision was disclosed in a notice from Bandai Namco Holdings, which presents it as the outcome of an ongoing review of the group’s portfolio and how development is organised across its studios.
The filing does not dress up the reasoning: “After comprehensively considering future business plans, necessary additional investment, and the possibility of profitability and business continuation, the Company has decided to discontinue Reflector’s business, dissolve and liquidate it.”
After comprehensively considering future business plans, necessary additional investment, and the possibility of profitability and business continuation, the Company has decided to discontinue Reflector’s business, dissolve and liquidate it.
Bandai Namco Holdings
Reflector posted its own message on LinkedIn, and GameRant reports that the studio is ending all activity with immediate effect. According to that statement, the cost of future development combined with the current state of the industry meant Bandai Namco could not justify investing any further.
The numbers behind Unknown 9
Unknown 9: Awakening put players in the shoes of Haroona, who can step into a hidden dimension called the Fold to take on a secret society, and it landed with a shrug rather than a bang. Its Steam user reviews sit at 55% positive, according to GameRant.
The financial table in Bandai Namco’s notice shows how heavily that weighed on the studio. All figures are in Canadian dollars:
- Year to March 31, 2024: CA$1.6 million in net sales and a CA$14.2 million loss
- Year to March 31, 2025, which covers launch: CA$47.8 million in net sales and a CA$28.4 million loss
- Year to March 31, 2026: CA$14.7 million in net sales and a CA$2 million loss
- Net assets at March 31, 2026: negative CA$89.5 million
Bandai Namco now expects to book an extraordinary loss of roughly €21 million (about ¥3.5 billion) from the closure, beginning with its third-quarter results for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2027. The company stresses that the figure is an estimate and that both the amount and the timing are still under review.
The closure follows an earlier retreat. After the game’s lukewarm reception, Bandai Namco and Reflector scrapped plans to grow Unknown 9 into a wider multimedia franchise, and CEO Herve Hoerdt warned back then that some jobs would go.
What happens next for the game and the team
There is no end date yet. Bandai Namco says the liquidation will be complete once the required procedures under local law have run their course, and that it has not set a concrete schedule.
The notice says nothing about the future of Unknown 9: Awakening on digital storefronts. GameRant estimates Reflector’s headcount at between 51 and 200, and the studio has said it will work with stakeholders to help its developers through the transition. For a game about a secret society guarding humanity’s greatest secrets, the studio’s own final chapter arrived in a very public filing.
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