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Reflector Entertainment Closure Follows Bandai Namco Business Review
Two years after Unknown 9: Awakening struggled to find an audience, its developer is reaching the end of the road. Bandai Namco has passed a board resolution to discontinue the business of Reflector Entertainment, dissolve the Montreal studio and begin liquidation proceedings.
The publisher says the decision followed a review of its future plans, the additional investment required and whether the business could remain profitable and sustainable. Reflector was acquired by Bandai Namco Entertainment Europe in September 2020 as part of an effort to strengthen development outside Japan.
Its closure now marks another shift in Bandai Namco’s international development footprint, following Nintendo’s acquisition of Bandai Namco Studios Singapore last year. There is no fixed date for the liquidation to be completed. Bandai Namco says the process will proceed according to applicable Canadian laws and regulations.
Unknown 9: Awakening Had Already Triggered Major Restructuring
Reflector’s difficulties did not begin with this week’s board resolution. The studio released Unknown 9: Awakening in October 2024 as the centrepiece of a wider multimedia universe spanning games, novels, comics and other projects. The game received mixed critical reception and ultimately failed to meet Bandai Namco’s commercial expectations.
A month after launch, Reflector Entertainment cut around 18% of its workforce. Further redundancies followed in January 2025, when the studio cancelled another project still in conceptualisation.
At the time, CEO Hervé Hoerdt directly linked that decision to the performance of Unknown 9: Awakening, saying the game had not come close to company expectations and did not justify further expansion of the universe. Remaining developers were subsequently moved onto a project based on an existing Bandai Namco IP.
Next Project Could Not Justify Further Investment
That remaining project appears to have become the final test for the studio. Reflector Entertainment said Bandai Namco reviewed its latest game, which had reached pre-production, alongside future development requirements and market conditions. The company ultimately concluded it could not justify investing several more years to complete the project.
That makes the closure broader than simply responding to a two-year-old commercial disappointment. Unknown 9 clearly weakened Reflector’s position, but Bandai Namco’s latest decision also reflects its assessment of what the studio could deliver next and how much further capital that would require.
Bandai Namco expects the shutdown to result in an extraordinary loss of approximately €21 million in its consolidated financial results from the third quarter of the fiscal year ending March 31, 2027 onwards.
The publisher continues to invest elsewhere in its development pipeline, including new internally developed projects such as Gundam Rogue Orbit, while its wider studio structure has also undergone changes following Katsuhiro Harada’s departure after almost 30 years.
For Reflector Entertainment, however, the attempt to move beyond Unknown 9 will now end before its next project ever reaches players.
