Day 1 Studios, most famous for the pretty-okay shooter F.E.A.R. 3 (sorry, not calling it F.3.A.R., as First Encounter Assault Recon is bad enough without the numeric) have layed off a significant portion of their staff following the loss of a publishing contract with Konami. This is tragic, as when I read the initial report from GameSpot, I had just learned that there was going to be a new Silent Scope.  Of course in the same sentence I learned that, I also learned that it is now cancelled.

Apparently, they "lost" the publishing contract, and can no longer sustain about 95% of their staff who were working on the new Silent Scope.  Best wishes go out to the team members who lost their jobs, especially because they had the opportunity to recreate one of the most fun arcade games of all time.  Ignoring the bland console ports and the console only Silent Scope 3, the Silent Scope games were unbelievably cool when played in the arcade.  For those who don't remember arcades and fun, Silent Scope was an arcade cabinet with a mounted Sniper Rifle peripheral.  The player looked at the main screen to locate targets and aimed through the mounted sniper rifle's scope, which had its own screen that reflected a zoomed in view of the main screen, to kill enemies.  It was an awesome concept and will almost certainly be the first arcade cabinet that I will buy when I am rich, especially now that the sequel is apparently cancelled.

While a few team members are apparently still with Day 1, and a smaller team still remains to work on a separate project, losing 95% of a development team has to be a crushing blow to Day 1.  That said, hopefully this second project can be a hit like their MechAssault games were. Once again, we wish those that lost their jobs the best of luck.