The end of one of the most innovative design and game making companies on the planet apparently laid everyone off on Friday. Its a shame but I'm still looking forward to Myst V that is yet to be released. Not to mention I haven't touched Myst IV yet.

From Zoomba:

Myst was THE example to show whenever you wanted to talk about games as an emerging art form. More effort went into the visual design and artistry than the game mechanic coding I bet. Cyan didn’t make games so much as they made beautiful worlds to explore, and a wonderfully complex story to discover.

Myst was the Killer App that made CD-ROM drives a must-have device in computers.

Myst was the first game that crossed the boundaries of gamer and non-gamer. Until The Sims came along years later, this was pretty much the only game that anyone could pick up and play, even if they weren’t a gamer. It held the most-units-sold title until The Sims (and it’s umpteenbajillion expansion packs).

Myst, for a time, even managed to revive the Adventure Game genre.

Here is a post from one of the Cyan employees.

Update. Found another article. My guess is that Ubisoft just couldn't clue into the vision that Rand has for the future of his games. Likely he'll go on to do something just as big as Myst when it first came out:

Rand Miller, creator of the huge selling Myst games, couldn't raise any money to fund new game development so has been forced to close down the studio. It's sad news - when I interviewed Rand not long ago, he spoke of ideas he hoped would redefine what it meant to play narrative based games. It seems no-one was quite as enthusiastic about his dreams as he was. Let's hope he finds a new home to express his ideas.

...

While the production unit has been disbanded, Cyan will continue as a company, pursuing new endeavours for the future. In the next few weeks, Cyan is expecting to provide more information about their plans. Other than this, Ubisoft has no additional information about Cyan or their future plans.