Fortis Games Shuts Down: 440 Jobs Lost as Las Vegas Sands Ends Funding

Fortis Games shuts down after five years, and as many as 440 people are set to lose their jobs. The San Francisco-based publisher is closing after its backer, casino giant Las Vegas Sands, ended funding and terminated its contracts worldwide. GamesBeat broke the news in an exclusive report on November 10, 2026, and CEO Steven Chiang confirmed the closure. Employees announced their departures on LinkedIn the same day.

Fortis Games Shuts Down: What Happened

• Fortis Games is closing, with as many as 440 jobs affected, GamesBeat reported on November 10, 2026.
• Backer Las Vegas Sands ended funding and terminated all of the company's contracts worldwide.
• CEO Steven Chiang confirmed the shutdown in a statement to GamesBeat.
• The game Twilight Towers goes offline on November 16, 2026.
• Fortis had acquired three studios: Doppio Games, Oktagon Games and Metagame.

Las Vegas Sands Ends Funding for Fortis Games

Fortis Games was created and fully owned by Las Vegas Sands, the casino and hospitality company behind the Venetian resort on the Las Vegas Strip. Las Vegas Sands president Patrick Dumont said in 2022 the aim was to diversify beyond gambling into interactive entertainment. Fortis launched in 2022, acquired studios in Portugal, Brazil and Romania, and aimed to build games as a service around social experiences. The expectation was that Las Vegas Sands would be a long-term investor. That backing is now gone. Gustavo Coronet, an employee in game production at Fortis, wrote on LinkedIn that Las Vegas Sands had “chosen to end funding and part ways, terminating all of the contracts, worldwide.”

Fortis Games CEO Steven Chiang Confirms the Closure

Steven Chiang, the former EA Sports and Zynga executive who led Fortis as CEO, confirmed the shutdown in a statement to GamesBeat. “Fortis has been a labor of love for so many of us and we’re disappointed we weren’t able to achieve the goals we set for ourselves when we started this journey more than five years ago,” Chiang said. “As we move forward, our primary focus will be on helping this talented team of individuals find new opportunities.” Scott Butterworth, the company's communications director, wrote on LinkedIn that Fortis had “officially shuttered, abruptly putting more than 400 talented people out of work (myself included).”

Twilight Towers Shuts Down on November 16

Fortis Games' best-known title, Twilight Towers, is also coming to an end. The merge tower-defence game reached soft launch in September 2025, but Fortis announced on November 4 that it would shut the game down on November 16, 2026, because player retention was not strong enough to keep it sustainable. “Keeping a live game running takes ongoing investment in development, content, servers, and player support, and despite our best efforts, we just weren’t seeing strong enough player retention to make the game sustainable,” Fortis said. Players will lose access to Twilight Towers when the shutdown takes effect on November 16, along with any progress and purchases tied to the game. Fortis' other listed titles, Bloom & Breakfast and Mergemon Wilds, never reached a full launch.

Why Fortis Games Failed

Fortis Games set out to build the next generation of games as a service, with social mechanics designed to create digital societies and lasting group experiences. Chiang had risen through EA Sports before moving to Zynga in 2010, and the core team included executives from Electronic Arts, WB Games, Zynga and Smule. The company spent five years building that vision, acquiring three studios and growing to around 440 people. But none of its games broke through, and Twilight Towers stayed in soft launch for more than a year without reaching a global release. With no hit to point to, Las Vegas Sands decided the experiment was over. Butterworth put it bluntly on LinkedIn: despite a “unique, community-focused approach to the mobile games market, we just couldn’t seem to get off the ground, and today, we finally ran out of runway.”

Another Brutal Week for the Games Industry

The Fortis Games shutdown lands in a grim stretch for game developers. Just a day earlier, Sony cancelled Fairgames, the live-service heist shooter from Haven Studios, after a playtest showed weak player retention, and Skydance's games division cut at least 30 jobs last week. Publishers are pulling the plug quickly on projects and teams that cannot prove they will hold an audience. For the roughly 440 people at Fortis, the immediate question is what comes next, and Chiang has said the company's focus is now on helping its staff find new roles.

Fortis Games Shutdown: Frequently Asked Questions

Fortis Games shuts down as one of the biggest studio closures of the year, with as many as 440 jobs lost and a five-year bet by Las Vegas Sands coming to an abrupt end. Twilight Towers goes offline on November 16, and the staff the company built from EA, WB Games and Zynga veterans now look for their next roles.