Fortis Games, an ambitious game publisher with a lot of financial back, is closing down and could be shedding as many as 440 jobs, GamesBeat has learned.
The San Francisco-based game company acquired multiple studios and grew over time. It was headed by an all-star team including Steven Chiang, CEO, and the former executive vice president of worldwide studios for WB Games. He was also
The initial money came from Las Vegas Sands, a company started by Sheldon Adelson (now deceased) and known as the creator of the Venetian Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip.
On LinkedIn, various Fortis employees said they had been laid off and some said the company is shutting down. We have asked the company for comment.
Pedro Gomes, concept artist at Fortis Games, wrote on LinkedIn, “Today marks the end of my journey at Fortis Games, as the company has officially shut down. Over the past five years, I’ve had the privilege of collaborating with truly exceptional people. I am incredibly grateful for everything we’ve built, learned, and created together. Being part of such a talented team has been an amazing experience, and I truly hope our paths cross again.”
And Scott Butterworth, communications director, wrote on LinkedIn, “Fortis Games — what could have been. Despite our 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. The company has officially shuttered, abruptly putting more than 400 talented people out of work (myself included).”
And Gustavo Coronet, an employee in game production at Fortis, wrote on LinkedIn, Today Fortis Games has been abruptly shut down.
“Las Vegas Sands has chosen to end funding and part ways, terminating all of the contracts, worldwide,” Coronet said. “Super proud of the work we’ve done. LVS’s decision does not delete the groundbreaking and best-in class agentic development workflow the Octopus team has built, nor the massively solid soft launch metrics both our project were achieving in such early stages of development.”
Among the companies Fortis acquired were three development teams: Doppio Games, in Portugal; Oktagon Games in Brazil, and Metagame in Romania. The ambition, as related by Patrick Dumont, Las Vegas Sands president in 2022, was to move into the interactive entertainment medium as a core pillar for diversifying beyond gambling. Dumont said the company was assembling a team to build games from the ground up.
The core leadership for the developer and publisher came from executives from Electronic Arts, WB Games, Zynga, Smule and more.
Fortis initially focused on creating the next generation of the video games as service model, pushing forward game design and social mechanics to enable digital societies and enduring group experiences that foster relationships and memories.
The founders believed online social experiences could be more positive and meaningful, and that games could become the primary form of social entertainment. Chiang happened to be a judge of our Mobile Mogul Awards contest for best mobile gaming execs, and he appeared on a panel about that at our recent GamesBeat Next 2026 event.
Chiang rose through the ranks at EA Sports at EA. He left Electronic Arts and went to Zynga in 2010 on the basis of his belief in games-as-a-service and free-to-play as the business model of the future that could attract broad markets. The expectation at Fortis was that Las Vegas Sands would be a long-term investor.