Tencent’s Last Sentinel “Most Likely Canceled” after layoffs

Tencent wanted its own Grand Theft Auto. Six years and hundreds of millions of dollars later, it looks like they’ve got nothing to show for it.

A new Bloomberg report from Jason Schreier claims Last Sentinel, the neon-soaked open-world action game from Lightspeed LA, has essentially been canned, even though the official line is a “reboot.” The studio just cut 80 jobs and says the game’s creative direction is changing, which is the kind of statement that usually means the thing you were excited about isn’t happening anymore.

What went wrong with Last Sentinel

Schreier’s report paints a rough picture. Playtests earlier this year reportedly didn’t land well, and Tencent’s Chinese executives weren’t happy with how the project was shaping up. People who worked on it told Bloomberg the game was janky and never hit the quality bar Tencent wanted from its answer to Rockstar, and there was apparently no way it was going to compete with Grand Theft Auto VI.

Tencent brought in a veteran designer to try to steer things back on track. That didn’t work either. On 28 July, that designer and Lightspeed LA founder Steve Martin reportedly told staff that Tencent was pulling the plug on the project as it existed.

Lightspeed LA hasn’t confirmed the game is dead, only saying it’s still building games. But between the layoffs, the vague “reboot” language, and a report this detailed, it’s hard to read this as anything other than the end of Last Sentinel. That’s a lot of money and six years to end up with nothing to show fans who’d started buying into the hype.

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