Unknown 9: The $100M Gaming Universe That Vanished

Unknown 9: Gaming's $100 Million Ghost Town

Here's a weird one for you: scrolling through Steam's new releases, I spotted a game that had fewer players than my local Minecraft server. Unknown 9 peaked at just 285 concurrent players - and no, that's not a typo. Even Goem, a game most people have never heard of, managed to pull five times that number. For a game that showed up at The Game Awards, something clearly went wrong here.

Remember those trailers from the Game Awards? They showed off Haruna, the protagonist, wielding supernatural abilities called "stepping" and navigating something called "the fold." The concept seemed solid - using your consciousness to control different vessels. But like many ambitious projects, the gap between concept and reality proved too wide to cross.

The story gets wilder. Unknown 9 wasn't just aiming to be another game - these folks were shooting for a full-blown Marvel-style universe. We're talking movies, novels, comics, web series, podcasts... the works. Bandai Namco backed this dream with a reported $100 million budget. That's the kind of money usually reserved for gaming's biggest blockbusters.

It's giving me flashbacks to Unearthed: Trail of Ibn Battuta - another game that threw everything at marketing while the actual game felt like an afterthought. But at least Unearthed didn't have nine figures behind it. Unknown 9's studio, led by a former Assassin's Creed writer, had the talent and the budget to make something special. Instead, they ended up making headlines for all the wrong reasons.

First came the initial wave - the kind of post no one in gaming likes to read but we've all seen too many times. Then, before anyone could catch their breath, round two swept through the back office. But here's where things took an unexpected turn. Instead of the usual "thanks for your service" post, the studio actually backed up their words with action. Everyone who got the tap walked out with full severance, health coverage, counseling if they needed it, even help figuring out their next move. Solid move by the studio, but let's be real - when your $100 million bet on gaming's next big universe crashes this hard, even golden parachutes don't soften the landing much.

IGN's review tells part of the story, but the numbers tell the rest. Former Assassin's Creed writer at the helm? Check. Major publisher backing? Check. Marketing budget big enough to get stage time at The Game Awards? Check. All that, and they couldn't even fill a medium-sized Discord server. In an industry where indie games made by three people in a garage can hit 100,000 players, Unknown 9's performance is almost impressively bad.

I'm planning to dive in before it potentially vanishes from Steam - sometimes these commercial flops hide some genuinely interesting ideas. The concept of supernatural abilities still intrigues me, even if the execution fell short. Plus, there's something fascinating about exploring these gaming ghost towns while they're still standing.

Looking at the wreckage, you can't help but wonder: what if they'd split that $100 million into ten $10 million projects? Or a hundred $1 million indie games? Instead, we got another reminder that all the money in the world can't guarantee success. Unknown 9 now sits in Steam's bargain bin, a cautionary tale about what happens when you spend more time planning the Netflix adaptation than polishing the actual game.

You know what's wild? Somewhere out there are file cabinets full of Unknown 9 universe plans that'll never see daylight. Comics nobody will read, movie scripts that'll never get filmed, and a pile of podcasts that'll never hit Spotify. But hey, maybe that's not such a bad legacy. Better to be the cautionary tale that saves the next studio from making the same mistakes than just another forgotten game that came and went.