Matt Booty, interim CEO and president of Midway, emailed employees of the company today, explaining the reasoning behind the shuttering of its Austin-based studio and the decision to nix the unannounced Career Criminal. The game, described by Booty as a “a large, ambitious, open-world project” was dropped — and most of the team laid off — because the “resource needs, feature set, schedule and financial profile for the Career Criminal project were not converging towards a reasonable chance of success”.

In the e-mail forwarded to Kotaku this afternoon, Booty emphasises that Midway’s Austin studio will soldier on, albeit with a much, much leaner staff, and continue to work on “other projects in development at the studio” as well as house its Central Outsourcing Group.

The full communication from Booty to employees can be found after the jump.