Long-running Australian studio Torus Games is "hibernating" but not closing down.

That's according to the outfit's founder Bill McIntosh, who confirmed to Game Developer that the studio's staff has been laid off. He also says he hopes to bring the company back one day.

"Our news is the same as many other developers. We’ve been chasing work for the last year, lots of projects in discussion but nobody signing anything up," McIntosh said.

"We spent a lot of our resources creating prototypes to support our pitches. In the end, we ran out of money late last year and were forced to give the team notice. The hope was that something would be signed sometime during the notice period but that never happened.

"Torus isn’t being wound up. We’re basically hibernating until we work out what our next opportunity will be. It’s a good chance for us to rethink what we should focus on."

This follows rumours on social media that Torus had laid off eight members of staff. The studio was founded back in 1994 and has worked on over 120 games over its long history.