Tencent abandons GTA rival Last Sentinel as studio lays off 80 staff

Tencent's ambitious attempt to compete with Grand Theft Auto has hit serious trouble. Developer Lightspeed LA has laid off 80 people after the publisher lost faith in Last Sentinel. According to Bloomberg, Tencent has decided not to continue funding the project, though the game has not been officially cancelled.

The title had been in development for six years and was announced at The Game Awards in 2023. Doubts emerged early on: a series of promotional videos released last year contained no actual gameplay footage. It later became clear the project had faced multiple delays and at least one partial reboot.

Last Sentinel was envisioned as an open-world game set in a vertical cyberpunk city in Japan, combining destructible environments with the usual GTA-style mix of driving and shooting. However, the team working on it was far smaller than the one Rockstar used for its recent open-world titles.

Anonymous sources at Lightspeed said developers had to deal with an unclear vision and a "polarizing" management approach from former Rockstar San Diego studio director Steve Martin. After a poor playtest and an underwhelming demonstration to Tencent executives earlier this year, the team scrambled to put together an improved build. But that apparently wasn't enough, and Tencent walked away.

Lightspeed is still working on Last Sentinel without Tencent's backing. The studio plans to "shift the creative and development direction" of the game "to meet player expectations." Given the project was pitched as a cyberpunk open-world rival to GTA, it's hard to see how Lightspeed can pull that off given the challenges ahead.