Australian studio Torus has laid off its team and will be on a hiatus for the foreseeable future.

The news was initially reported by journalist Jack Ryan on social media, with founder Bill McIntosh then telling GamesIndustry.biz that the company “is not winding up yet” and that a decision will be made about whether or not it’ll shut down definitely later this year depending on 2024 “plays out.”

“All employees were given a month’s notice after returning to work early January,” McIntosh told us. “The hope was that, during the notice period, we could have gotten at least one of the projects in discussion greenlit. That never happened and half the team went at the end of January.

“The rest went at the end of February with two of them being on secondment to another developer and two being family members helping to finalise a small project that was finishing up. The company is not winding up yet. We still have some active business interests. We’ll make a decision on finally closing the company dependent on how the rest of this year plays out.

“We fought hard to keep the team going for most of last year. During that time, we watched the growing momentum of layoffs and studio closures. Ultimately, we ran out of money and were forced to make some unhappy decisions.”

McIntosh established Torus Games in 1994, specialising in licensed titles for a variety of platforms.