MercurySteam Cuts Staff Weeks Before Blades of Fire Launch

MercurySteam, the Madrid studio behind Metroid Dread and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, confirmed layoffs on LinkedIn this week, framed as a "workforce adjustment process" with no headcount disclosed. The timing is what makes this one ugly: the cuts land weeks before the studio launches Blades of Fire, a new Soulslike-adjacent action IP it has been building for years. Shipping a new game while shedding the people who built it is the 2026 industry template at this point. The backdrop matters too — MercurySteam spent the post-Dread cycle fielding crunch and credit-omission allegations, so this isn't the first time the studio has made news for how it treats staff. A launch under these conditions will land in a rough discourse regardless of how the game reviews.