August 8, 2026
Myst opportunity? More like missed
No One Can Afford to Make Myst Games Anymore
Even a beloved classic can’t get funded now, and fans are spiraling into 90s heartbreak
TLDR: Myst’s planned new sequel couldn’t get funding even after strong pitches and fan excitement, showing how hard it has become for mid-sized games to survive. In the comments, people split between blaming the economy, blaming publishers, and sadly realizing they might just miss the 1990s.
The big shocker here isn’t just that Myst, one of the most famous computer games of the 1990s, has a new sequel idea. It’s that the game, codenamed Anglerfish, looked good, got excited reactions to its trailer, and still couldn’t get the money to be made. Cyan, the studio behind Myst, pitched it to more than a dozen publishers, asked for a relatively modest budget by modern standards, got praise, then got absolutely nowhere. The result: the game was frozen and about half the staff got laid off. Ouch.
And the comments? Pure doom, doubt, and nostalgia. One camp went full economy panic mode, with “the macro economics of the software space seem shaky” setting the tone like everyone had suddenly become an armchair Wall Street analyst for puzzle games. Another commenter immediately pushed back with the sharper, juicier question: is this really about money, or do publishers just not want to back independent studios anymore? That’s the real drama in the thread: is the market broken, or are the gatekeepers just cowardly?
Then came the emotional whiplash. One user skipped the business debate entirely and went straight for the heart with a Packard Bell memory lane post that basically said, maybe I don’t miss Myst, maybe I miss being young. Brutal. Even the confused outsider energy landed hard, with one commenter admitting the games business seems almost impossible to understand profitably. So yes, the story is about a dead sequel—but the comments turned it into a bigger funeral for the lost middle class of gaming, and maybe for the 1990s too.
Key Points
- •Cyan Worlds failed to secure $1 million to $10 million in publisher funding for *Anglerfish*, a new *Myst* project, despite positive reactions to its demo and trailer.
- •After shelving *Anglerfish*, Cyan laid off 12 employees, which the article says was roughly half of its staff.
- •The article says funding for double-A games has contracted, leaving a gap between blockbuster triple-A titles and low-budget micro-indie projects.
- •*Myst* sold more than 6 million copies in the 1990s and was once the bestselling PC game until *The Sims* surpassed it in 2002.
- •Industry figures cited in the article say the most difficult funding range now is roughly $2 million to $15 million, a band once supported by publishers focused on mid-budget games.