The Cyan Worlds Anglerfish funding effort ended without a deal, according to WIRED, leaving the proposed new game in the Myst universe on ice. Cyan spent four months building a playable demo, then sought $1 million to $10 million from publishers to complete it. More than a dozen publishers saw the pitch at the previous year’s Game Developers Conference and D.I.C.E. Summit, but none agreed to fund the project.
That is bad news for a studio whose name is attached to one of PC gaming’s formative hits. Myst sold more than 6 million copies in the 1990s and held the PC sales record until The Sims passed it in 2002, WIRED reported. Yet a famous back catalog does not make a new production budget appear on command.
What happened to Cyan Worlds’ Anglerfish?
The Myst creators released a trailer for Anglerfish after the project had already been shelved, WIRED reported. The proposed game was described as a darker entry in the series, with the player held captive in an unfamiliar world by an angry writer. Actor Noshir Dalal performed the character through voice work and motion capture.
Eric A. Anderson, Cyan’s creative director, told WIRED that publishers who liked the project could not get approval from their senior management to release money. John Eternal, a former PlayStation partner-development lead who helped with the pitch, characterized the result as evidence that funding for “double-A” games had dried up. Those are accounts from people involved in the process, not a measured verdict on every publisher or every puzzle game.
The unsuccessful search was followed by layoffs. Cyan announced in March 2025 that it would cut 12 employees, roughly half its team, citing industry conditions and the pressures of funding game development month to month. GamesIndustry.biz reported that the studio said its immediate priority was financing its next project and stabilizing the business.
Why is mid-budget game funding difficult?
Developers interviewed by WIRED described a squeezed market. At one end, the publication said large studios can spend more than $200 million on development and marketing for a single release. At the other, micro-indie teams may make games for less than $1 million. Doug North Cook, chief executive and creative director of Creature, said projects in the $2 million to $15 million range had become difficult for many developers to finance.
Anglerfish’s requested $1 million to $10 million sits near that range, but the reporting does not establish that the broader funding climate alone caused Cyan’s pitch to fail. It establishes a narrower fact: the studio showed a working demo to publishers and came away without an agreement.
Blue Prince illustrates a different route, not a universal template. Its developer, Tonda Ros, told WIRED that he used personal savings and advertising revenue from a Magic: The Gathering website to finish the game, then approached publishers for marketing, porting and release support. Cyan was seeking publisher funding before Anglerfish could be completed.
This story draws on original reporting from WIRED.
