Tomb Raider Hopes Are Growing Even Smaller In 2026

Two new games for the Tomb Raider series were announced last last year, with Amazon’s gaming division showing off big plans for the storied franchise. With Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis planned for 2026 and Tomb Raider: Catalyst in 2027, the existence of new animated and live action shows also show a heavy investment in the series. However, internal struggles have a chance to derail game development, dashing fan hopes as quickly as they appeared.

As of this time of writing, Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis has a planned release time for this year, with gameplay showing off Lara Croft in Unreal Engine 5. This game is set to be a re-imagining of the first Tomb Raider title from 1996, almost acting as a remake in many ways. Although changes to core systems are inevitable, this title represents a way to introduce modern audiences to the series in a fresh and interesting “new” game.

Crystal Dynamics Has Another Round Of Layoffs, Making Four In Under A Single Year

Layoffs have been plaguing the gaming industry lately, as Tomb Raider development studio Crystal Dynamics knows too well. Ever since the studio’s acquisition by Embracer Group in 2022, there has been aggressive downsizing for multiple years. 2023 saw at least ten different developers get cut, while 2025 saw three additional rounds of layoffs some time later. 17 additional creators were let go in March 2025, with another 30 being axed in November 2025 only eight months later.

Taking place a year after the second round of layoffs, March 2026 has seen another 20 developers let go as the company continues to cut costs. This was split between development personal and central operations roles, as per a statement given out by Crystal Dynamics. According to an official LinkedIn post, this was due to the progression of projects at the studio, as team structures were shuffled to align with long-term goals.

Although Crystal Dynamics went on to officially claim that they would be supporting those let go in attempts to find other work, the timing of these layoffs has many concerned. Despite the studio’s claims to be fully committed to continuing Tomb Raider projects, the dwindling side of their game development teams reflects an all-too common trope in many companies recently. Nearly every major studio has had some form of huge layoffs, which have negatively impacted the speed at which their gaming projects continue.

Restructuring Of The Studio Comes From Downsizing After Being Bought Out

There are many reasons why this rampant downsizing could have occurred at Crystal Dynamics, but it’s unsurprising to see that it all started after they were bought up by Embracer Group. This Swedish-based game and media holding company has had a history of buying up mid-size publishers and downsizing them, including some well-known names in the industry. To make matters worse, Crystal Dynamics has a huge number of collaborations in other media, specifically involving the Tomb Raider series.

Amazon Game Studios has been very adamant toward its own Tomb Raider projects, including a live action series starring Sophie Turner as Lara Croft. When combined with the animated Tomb Raider series, this could have created a greater pressure on Crystal Dynamics to produce their games faster. Considering how their next two games are expected to release within a year of each other, it’s baffling to see the company cut valuable developers who could help ensure those projects match their full potential.

Jumbled Abundance Of Tomb Raider Projects Could Slow Down Drastically Soon

To put it bluntly — Crystal Dynamics has been swamped with projects lately, even contributing to the cancelled Perfect Dark remake with Xbox recently. Despite that title no longer existing, it likely heavily cut into the work the studio did, which has now gotten harder with fewer workers. Even if all four layoff rounds gave Crystal Dynamics more room for budgets regarding their projects, they are quickly losing manpower on producing their games.

Developing two games at the same time is a lot for any studio to handle, even with a fully staffed set of teams on each one. Even arguments about Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis being a remake don’t hold as much weight when you consider just how many changes are going into it. For all intents and purposes, Legacy of Atlantis might as well be a new game, which doesn’t even cover the ambitious scope of Tomb Raider: Catalyst, which is supposed to be a new adventure for Lara Croft in northern India.

Team “optimizations” through layoffs seems like an oxymoron, creating a fear that the extra effort being made at Crystal Dynamics will come to a crashing halt now that there are fewer developers to bear the weight of production challenges. This could impact the quality of each game, or cause them to even be delayed under the new circumstances of the studio. Either way, fans lose as their hype for new Tomb Raider experiences is buried under the expectations that a reduced Crystal Dynamics team can’t meet.

Successful releases of any new game might also come under a ton of crunch hours from development, which has its own moral and worker’s rights issues. Such a sheer number of layoffs from Crystal Dynamics is discouraging no matter how you look at it, even if the promise of multiple new Tomb Raider games perpetuates excitement from long-time series fans.

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