PowerWash Simulator developer FuturLab has cancelled an unannounced project and confirmed that seven employees have since left the studio. The project was unrelated to PowerWash Simulator and was still in pre-production when it was shelved, CEO Kirsty Rigden told This Week in Video Games. FuturLab said continuing development would not have been financially sensible because the projected cost of completing the game exceeded its expected return.
According to Rigden, the cancellation forced FuturLab to reconsider its future plans and staffing requirements while concentrating on PowerWash Simulator 2 and prototypes for other potential games. She described the departure of the seven employees as a difficult outcome involving talented people, including some who had been at FuturLab for a long time. The studio declined to explicitly confirm whether all seven departures were formal redundancies, citing a confidential and legally binding process.
This Week in Video Games separately reported, based on anonymous sources familiar with the situation, that the cancelled title had been worked on for roughly two to three years before employees were informed of its cancellation in late June 2026. Those sources claimed affected staff were left without new assignments for a period before seven people departed in late July. FuturLab itself has confirmed the cancellation and number of departures, but has not publicly verified all of the internal circumstances described by those sources.
The report also alleges that managers and team leads were initially not told why some of their direct reports had stopped working. Sources said an August company meeting later addressed a restructuring process and connected the departures to the cancelled project. Staff were allegedly instructed to refer to those who had left as “the leavers” rather than using the term redundancy, although FuturLab has not independently confirmed that terminology.
Rigden said the cancelled project had reached a point where its business case no longer justified further development. According to her statement, the title “would have cost us more than it was projected to make,” making cancellation the more sustainable choice for the company. She added that making difficult decisions early was intended to protect FuturLab’s longer-term position.
The studio says the restructuring will not affect development of PowerWash Simulator 2. FuturLab remains focused on supporting that game while also experimenting with ideas for future projects, suggesting the cancellation does not represent a withdrawal from new development altogether. Its latest publicly available financial accounts show that FuturLab employed an average of 110 people during 2025.
The decision follows a similar cost-focused move from FuturLab in January 2025, when it ended future support for PowerWash Simulator VR. At the time, Rigden said the VR version cost more to support than it generated and chose to redeploy that team onto other projects instead of cutting positions. The latest situation differs because the cancellation of the unannounced game ultimately coincided with seven people leaving the business.
It also arrives during another difficult period for employment across the games industry. Recent restructuring has affected projects and teams at companies ranging from Don’t Nod to Bit Reactor, while other studios have cancelled games or reduced staff as production costs and funding conditions tighten. A separate Metro multiplayer project was reportedly removed from Saber Latam amid layoffs, highlighting how project cancellations and workforce reductions continue to intersect across the sector.
FuturLab has not disclosed the cancelled game’s title, genre, publisher, platforms or how far its pre-production work had progressed beyond the reported two-to-three-year development period. There is also no indication that the project was connected to any existing PowerWash Simulator plans. For now, the confirmed picture is that FuturLab ended a non-PowerWash project after deciding its expected costs outweighed its likely returns, while seven employees subsequently left the company as the studio refocused around PowerWash Simulator 2 and future prototypes.
