Jake Solomon announced that Midsummer Studios has closed. The independent studio he founded after leaving Firaxis Games is shutting down, taking its first project with it.
To be clear: this is not Firaxis closing. Solomon left the studio behind XCOM and Civilization in 2022 to start Midsummer. That new venture has now ended.
Solomon shared early footage of Burbank, the now-canceled game Midsummer was building. The video shows a life sim where players create characters and drop them into scenes to generate stories. The twist was AI-driven character behavior.
According to Solomon, characters in Burbank would use AI for “memory, reasoning and speech.” He stressed that human artists created all the art and the team had no plans to replace developers with AI. However, the finished game would have used AI-generated voices for characters.
The footage shows what appears to be a pre-alpha build. Players could set up scenarios and watch AI-powered characters interact based on their personalities and memories. Think The Sims meets AI Dungeon, with a focus on emergent storytelling rather than traditional gameplay loops.
Solomon led the modern XCOM reboot at Firaxis, directing both XCOM: Enemy Unknown and XCOM 2. Those games revived turn-based tactics as a major genre. He later directed Marvel’s Midnight Suns, which mixed tactical combat with relationship systems.
Another one bites the dust
The closure adds to a growing list of studio shutdowns across the game industry. New independent studios face a brutal equation: years of development costs before any revenue arrives. If funding runs out or a publisher pulls support, even experienced teams can fold before shipping.
Midsummer joins dozens of studios that have closed or laid off staff since 2022. The post-pandemic correction, rising interest rates, and tighter investment conditions have made game development a riskier bet for funders.
The Burbank footage is now the only public record of what Midsummer was building.
