All is not well in the world of ProbablyMonsters.
CEO Harold Ryan recently told Game Developer that the studio is on the path to sustainability with its first two game releases Storm Lancers and Ire: A Prologue. Storm Lancers was touted as a specific example of a “short-term” game that could be made quickly to support larger games that require more time in development.
There’s a slight issue: the story of Storm Lancers’ development is much less straightforward than it first appeared. Following our interview with Ryan, developers familiar with the project told us that the game didn’t have a “short-term” development cycle, and it was primarily made by external development studio Companion Group.
Furthermore, these sources allege that the game was largely created using assets from another canceled game that was four years in development by ProbablyMonsters’ shuttered subsidiary Battle Barge, both calling the “short-term” development claims into question and illuminating what sources describe as mismanagement within ProbablyMonsters.
That information comes from 11 former ProbablyMonsters employees and others familiar with Battle Barge, which was making a co-op multiplayer third-person shooter called “Project Vance.” The game was canceled in October 2024. Nine of the sources we spoke with requested anonymity for fear of retaliation.
According to them, Ryan’s characterization of Storm Lancers as a “short-term” game is one of many signs of mismanagement and chaos at a studio founded on the promise of building a better way to make triple-A games.
Who is ProbablyMonsters?
First founded in 2016 by former Bungie CEO Harold Ryan, ProbablyMonsters exited “stealth mode” in 2019 with the announcement of an $18.8 million funding round and a professed mission to build a “better model” for triple-A game development. It housed numerous game studios operating under names like “Cauldron,” “Iron,” “Hidden Grove,” “Battle Barge,” and Concord developer Firewalk Studios.
It went on to raise over $400 million in the next three years, eventually selling Firewalk Studios to Sony Interactive Entertainment in 2023 for an undisclosed amount. Sony would later shutter Firewalk and shut down Concord after the multiplayer first-person shooter debuted to infamously low sales.
It was around that time period that developers say things began to worsen, beginning with the shutdown of Cauldron. An internal email sent by Ryan in 2024 stated that Cauldron had been canceled by an unnamed publisher. Sources described a rolling wave of game cancelations from 2023 through 2025, where projects from Iron, Hidden Grove, and Battle Barge were “paused,” some developers let go, and others moved to different teams about every 6-9 months, even as new projects were regularly greenlit.
Environment artist Carol Ha-Torrez was one of the developers laid off from Battle Barge by ProbablyMonsters in 2024. She’d joined the studio after Electronic Arts laid her and dozens of other developers off from Respawn Entertainment earlier that year.
She turned down an offer to transfer to EA Battlefield Studios developer Ripple Effect after hearing positive word about ProbablyMonsters’ “developer-first” culture.
By the time ProbablyMonsters shut down Battle Barge, Ha-Torez and the other former employees we spoke with said all signs of that supportive culture were gone—replaced by a chaotic workplace where Ryan allegedly surveilled employees, blamed workers behind their backs for failures outside their control, and shifted project goals at the drop of a hat.
A spokesperson for ProbablyMonsters provided the following statement in response to detailed questions sent by Game Developer about these layoffs and Ryan’s alleged behavior. “ProbablyMonsters has always been defined by the dedication, hard work, and creativity of its teams,” they stated. “In recent years, the gaming industry has been constantly evolving, and building a company in this environment means facing tough choices with no easy answers. Those choices require balancing the immediate needs of our people while understanding the impact they can have.”
“At the same time, we have a responsibility to keep the company healthy for the long term. We believe being responsible isn’t just about getting everything right in the moment. It’s about staying true to our mission of supporting lasting careers in game development. We know this work is never simple, and we work hard every day to learn, adjust, and improve.”
“Through it all, our priority has remained the same: respecting employees for their contributions and treating them fairly, including giving credits to teams past and present who contribute to our projects. Building a supportive culture has always been central to who we are, and we’re focused on making ProbablyMonsters a place where teams can do their best creative work.”
Battle Barge’s headcount and direction shifted overnight
In our previous conversation with Ryan, the ProbablyMonsters CEO stated that the company “looked at” the possibility of turning its canceled live service games into standalone premium titles. But Battle Barge’s final voyage was far more dramatic.
In September 2024 Ryan announced that former developers from Hidden Grove and Iron would be assigned to support Battle Barge’s new mission: turning Project Vance into a premium triple-A title that could ship as a standalone game in 2025. The first milestone: a playable “winter build” with a November deadline.
Battle Barge’s team size effectively multiplied overnight, jumping from around 30-40 to an estimated 100 developers. Sources said Ryan ignored warnings that adding dozens of workers and changing the scope of the project would make development more difficult.
Communication became arduous as developers who previously worked closely together were split into different strike teams assigned to different tasks. One group of Hidden Grove alumni was tasked with building a 10-hour campaign mode from scratch—all while trying to learn new tools, processes, and file structures that had been built over 4 years by an entirely different team.
Sources differed on whether this was a period of “crunch” or not. Some said they kept normal hours, but Ha-Torrez called it a period of “soft crunch,” where she witnessed some colleagues submitting Perforce updates at midnight.
“You could cut the tension with a knife,” she said. Other former employees said every day they feared they would lose their jobs, especially after Ryan fired games teams chief product officer Adam Rymer on October 22, which was announced internally via a studio-wide email reviewed by Game Developer.
Despite the challenges, sources said the development team hit their assigned targets. A playable build of Project Vance was ready to go on October 28, according to one email documenting the results of a build verification test which stated the game was ready for QA testing and internal playtesting.
But they never had a chance to hit the finish line. On October 28, before the winter build could be finalized, ProbablyMonsters laid off nearly 50 employees and shuttered Battle Barge, rolling the remaining workers onto other projects. ProbablyMonsters then transferred the Project Vance IP and assets to Companion Group to develop Storm Lancers inside of a year.
The game does not credit former Battle Barge developers. Instead there is a short note in the credits acknowledging the “dedication, creativity, and hard work” of past and present ProbablyMonsters employees. A company spokesperson alluded to this message when asked about Companion Group’s involvement in the making of Storm Lancers.
“The credits for the game reflect the contributions of many teams involved in its development. We respect the work of all teams, past and present, and those contributions are acknowledged in the credits.”
The credits of Storm Lancers, which include employees of ProbablyMonsters and Companion Group. Image via ProbablyMonsters.
Game Developer reviewed a recording of the Zoom call where laid-off workers demanded to know why there had been no layoff notification as required by the WARN Act. The WARN Act mandates that eligible employers issue advance notice of layoffs if an office or plant is being shuttered, resulting in 50 or more full-time employees losing their jobs. Approximately 54 people had joined the Zoom call.
Ha-Torrez and others said it felt like the company planned layoffs and project changes to avoid issuing these notices. Said strategy is “very common” among employers said KUSK Law partner Don McGowan, an external legal expert consulted during this reporting. When asked if the strategy is legal, he said he doesn’t feel it’s consistent with “the obligations the law places on employers.”
On the recorded call, ProbablyMonsters associate general counsel Kristen Daniels repeatedly stressed that the number of laid-off employees did not cross the mandated threshold. “We’ve done the math very carefully,” she said.
QA employees were regularly in the crosshairs
According to our sources, like former test lead Douglas Martin, the chaos and confusion at the heart of ProbablyMonsters came from Ryan himself and the cadre of former Bungie colleagues and close friends who staffed his C-suite. Ryan’s erratic behavior apparently impacted ProbablyMonsters’ centralized QA team well before the shift in direction for Project Vance.
In 2022 he ordered all QA employees to return to the office full-time, even those hired remotely or who were working with remote teams. Some testers lived hours away from the studio. Martin said Ryan was only in the office himself one or two days a week.
He recalled a meeting where Ryan explained to QA testers why they would not receive any additional compensation for having to commute into the office (despite the additional expenses some would incur). “You guys are already paid at the top of the market. You can afford to commute,” he said, according to Martin.
After returning to the office, testers were told that Ryan personally monitored when they swiped badges to enter and exit the building. During this time, the division’s staffing levels fluctuated, with leads like Martin and department heads like central services head Ron Henseleit being suddenly ousted from the company. Candidates for open QA positions would be interviewed, only for the position to be axed, sometimes allegedly at Ryan’s direction.
QA tester Jessica Gonzalez, formerly a workplace organizer for A Better ABK at Activision Blizzard, told Game Developer she recalls being “strung along” for a job at ProbablyMonsters after receiving a verbal offer from Martin in 2024. Martin remembered making the decision to hire Gonzalez and telling her she’d have an offer letter soon—and then being told not to send it. The position was closed a few weeks later.
Martin recalled the incident and said “there was no reason not to hire” her, adding that he still feels “really shitty” about what happened to Gonzalez.
QA workers were also regularly blamed for problems completely outside their control. One former tester recalled that Ryan frequently said QA was responsible for Concord development not moving at a faster pace, sometimes in meetings with QA staffers from Firewalk Studios.
At one point, QA testers were tasked with examining network code at Hidden Grove, something they were never trained to do. Later, they became the final point of validation for new Project Vance game features.
This latter directive was allegedly issued during a period when all our anonymous sources were aware Ryan had moved his desk into a newly formed “QA bullpen” that many joked was a “panopticon.” Ryan apparently insisted that this was not a surveillance measure, but one that would allow him to be the first to check submitted builds.
This earned him the moniker of “the world’s most expensive tester.”
Surveillance, blame games, and “talking shit”
Martin explained to Game Developer that he and Ryan were fellow test leads on the original Xbox in the early 2000s. He had no plans to work with the future ProbablyMonsters CEO after that first encounter, only taking the job at ProbablyMonsters after being assured by then-QA director Prodipto Roy that Ryan had changed his ways.
Martin said that seemed to be true—until the shutdown of Cauldron in 2023. Multiple sources told Game Developer that the troubles at the company started around this time. The former test lead alleged that Ryan was surrounded by close allies who enabled his behavior while behaving just as badly themselves. “There’s a lot of people working with Harold who are enabling him and doing the same thing,” he said.
During this period of tumult, ProbablyMonsters greenlit new projects and hired developers to work on them, only to reverse course without public fanfare, including one from a team called “Icaro” that was internally announced in July 2024, only to be canceled in December of that year.
Sources described multiple occasions where developers interviewed at the company, only to have their offer letters rescinded or put on hold at Ryan’s direction. One prospective employee reportedly moved to Washington state to work in-office and leased an apartment only for Ryan to “nuke” her position and rescind her offer letter days before she started.
.jpg "A screenshot of Storm Lancers. Two cartoon characters battle monsters in a cartoony 2D environment.")
Character models, 2D art, and shaders from Project Vance are visible across Storm Lancers. Image via ProbablyMonsters.
Multiple sources also claimed that Ryan surveilled employees. He issued regular warnings about remote workers taking any time away from their desks, despite Battle Barge leadership previously stating employees were free to manage their own time and make up work later in the day if needed.
Ryan apparently issued these warnings after joining the Battle Barge “AFK” Slack channel where workers would drop notices about their status. He denied internal rumors at the time that he was monitoring employees in a company-wide Slack message reviewed by Game Developer. In it, he claimed these rumors had driven developers to “make up” work filed in project management tool Jira.
Sources also said Ryan and other members of senior leadership regularly disparaged colleagues behind their backs. “He loves to talk shit,” said a former QA tester when describing said comments. Ryan allegedly verbally disparaged Project Vance around some employees, and word of his displeasure with the game spread through the studio.
Ryan took additional swipes at his former colleagues from Firewalk Studios in a series of Slack messages sent while ProbablyMonsters employees discussed the sudden shutdown of Concord. “As game developers who always seek to love what we do, Concord should serve as proof of the cautionary tales about building for yourself vs your audience,” he said in one message.
In another one sent after Firewalk was shut down, the CEO simply said “they refused to listen for years.”
Unkept promises, impossible goals
Ha-Torrez, Martin and all our other sources said Ryan’s behavior flew in the face of promises by ProbablyMonsters to build a positive workplace culture. Ha-Torrez provided a copy of the welcome letter sent by Ryan where he stated that he started the studio in part to make triple-A games “without the burden of developers experiencing difficult cultures, unpredictable compensation, and unstable employment.”
“I am committed to continuing with the vision of putting people first,” he wrote.
One veteran developer pointed to the outsourcing of Storm Lancers and building it off years-old assets from Project Vance as a clear red flag for Ryan’s vision of the company. When this developer read our interview with Ryan, they said it felt like the CEO was claiming he figured out a model for making games quickly and sustainably. They were worried other studios would use his model as inspiration.
Ryan’s behavior and the chaotic layoffs surrounding Cauldron, Iron, Hidden Grove, and Battle Barge drove all the developers we spoke with to express doubt over Ryan’s promise that the studio is on the path to sustainability.
“It’s not real,” said the veteran developer, alluding to Ryan’s professed vision for “short-term” games that act as a financial buffer for larger projects. “I don’t want people to believe it’s real because that’s just not going to work for everyone.”
Update 9/23: This story has been updated to correctly state Adam Rymer’s previous job title at ProbablyMonsters as chief product officer. It previously stated he was chief of staff, games, and to correct a typo misidentifying Ryan.