Former Arkane Austin VR lead and lead art outsource manager, Eric Beyhl, has opened a new studio called Cire Games after securing financing from Meta.
Breaking the news on Linkedin, Beyhl explained he established Cire following the closure of Arkane Austin (one of multiple internal studios torched by Microsoft last year) after receiving backing from Meta through its multi-million dollar ‘Ignition’ rapid prototyping fund.
“Ignition was designed to help bootstrap young startups formed in the midst of the game industry’s ongoing mass layoffs, and the timing could not have been better,” explained Beyhl.
The Arkane veteran spent over a decade at the studio, initially joining the company as lead environment artist on Prey before stepping up as VR lead on the title’s Typhon Hunter expansion.
Cire Games isn’t limited to VR exclusively, with Beyhl explaining the studio will “target as many platforms as possible” in the future.
Beyhl has recruited former colleagues, familiar external partners, and a few new faces to help wrestle the studio’s debut project into being. He also handed a special thanks to Meta’s director of games Chris Pruett, who officially announced the studio during a GDC talk this year.
Meta dishes out funding amid layoffs and studio closures
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Meta announced Oculus Publishing Ignition in March 2024. The program aimed to provide funding to around 20 small-sized, newly-formed teams to help them rapidly build prototypes for the Meta Quest 3. Applications were open until September 2024. Alongside Cire Games, developers such as Space Gnome Studio also received funding through the program (via LinkedIn).
“We understand the recent challenges faced by the game development industry and the sweeping impact it has had on platforms, publishers, studios, teams, and individuals,” reads an explainer on the Ignition website. “In light of this, we created Oculus Publishing Ignition, a lightweight and rapid prototyping fund to support newly formed studios banding together through these challenges.”
Last year, Meta laid off workers within its Reality Labs division and shut down Echo developer Ready at Dawn, which the company acquired in 2020. It also shuttered augmented reality effects platform Spark, leaving some third-party effects creators in the lurch.
More recently, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced plans to cut around 5 percent of the company’s global workforce to “raise the bar on performance management.” The January announcement ushered in the third round of major layoffs at the company in recent years, adding to the 22,000 roles that were cut across 2022 and 2023.
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