{"id":738896,"date":"2026-06-15T22:49:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T22:49:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/738896\/"},"modified":"2026-06-15T22:49:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T22:49:17","slug":"xbox-is-reportedly-planning-to-shut-down-compulsion-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/738896\/","title":{"rendered":"Xbox is reportedly planning to shut down Compulsion Games"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1781563756_672_resize.webp\" title=\"Xbox is reportedly planning to shut down Compulsion Games\" alt=\"Xbox is reportedly planning to shut down Compulsion Games\" width=\"1032\" height=\"581\"\/><\/p>\n<p>The Peabody-winning studio developed South of Midnight and We Happy Few.<\/p>\n<p>Just days after Xbox CEO Asha Sharma confirmed a \u201cfrustrating\u201d reality for the state of Xbox, a new report claims that the company is planning to shutter Compulsion Games, the studio behind 2025\u2019s South of Midnight.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/kotaku.com\/xbox-shuttering-south-of-midnight-peabody-award-compulsion-games-2000706065\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Kotaku reported the news<\/a> of Compulsion Games\u2019 closure. The outlet believes that the number of affected employees is larger than the 90 listed on its LinkedIn profile.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1781563756_746_resize.webp\" alt=\"Hazel using her powers in South of Midnight.\" caption=\"true\" width=\"986\" height=\"555\"\/><br \/>\n&#13;<br \/>\n<br \/>Source: Xbox Game Studios&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p>Compulsion Games has developed three games since its founding in 2009: Contrast, We Happy Few, and South of Midnight. The latter of which was scored <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shacknews.com\/article\/143758\/south-of-midnight-review-score\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">an 8\/10 in my Shacknews review<\/a>. It also won the <a href=\"https:\/\/peabodyawards.com\/award-profile\/south-of-midnight\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Peabody Award<\/a> for Best Interactive Game less than two months ago. A feat for which <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/asha_shar\/status\/2047376012829511950\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Asha Sharma publicly congratulated the team<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>In a follow-up post on <a href=\"https:\/\/bsky.app\/profile\/duckvalentine.bsky.social\/post\/3modryg3rhc2f\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">BlueSky<\/a>, reporter Rebekah Valentine stated that Compulsion leadership is \u201capparently in some sort of \u2018negotiations\u2019 with Microsoft over the decision, though it\u2019s unclear what the potential outcome of these conversations could be. Xbox acquired Compulsion Games in 2018. <\/p>\n<p>Shacknews staff does not use generative artificial intelligence (AI) in their content. Shacknews strictly prohibits the use of its content for AI training or to generate text, including text in the style or format used for this publication. Shacknews reserves all rights to this work.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.shacknews.com\/author\/donovan-erskine\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1781563757_167_resize.webp\" alt=\"News Editor\" title=\"News Editor\" width=\"108\" height=\"108\"\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Donovan is a journalist from Maryland. His oldest gaming memory is playing Pajama Sam on his mom&#8217;s desktop during weekends. Pok\u00e9mon Emerald, Halo 2, and the original Star Wars Battlefront 2 were some of the most influential titles in awakening his love for video games. After interning for Shacknews throughout college, Donovan graduated from Bowie State University in 2020 with a major in broadcast journalism and joined the team full-time. He is a huge film fanatic and will talk with you about movies and games all day. You can follow him on twitter <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Donimals_\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">@Donimals_<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t<script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Peabody-winning studio developed South of Midnight and We Happy Few. Just days after Xbox CEO Asha Sharma&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":738897,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,63,105],"class_list":["post-738896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=738896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738896\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/738897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=738896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=738896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=738896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}