Stealth launching a game during an awards ceremony is cool. But you know what's cooler? Stealth launching a union. As many in the games industry settled in for an evening of advertisements and blockbuster backslapping, one group of US workers quietly succeeded in organising something of their own. Employees at Zenimax Online Studios launched their union with 461 members, as announced on social media site Bluesky last night.
]]>A studio led by former Mass Effect director Casey Hudson have shut down before being able to show the sci-fi narrative adventure they were working on. Humanoid Origin posted the announcement of the studio's closure on LinkedIn yesterday, saying that a "shortfall of funding" was responsible for the decision. They had been making a "multi-platform AAA game, focusing on character-driven narrative in an all-new science-fiction universe", according to the studio's website.
]]>Workers at Reflector Entertainment, the Montreal studio that recently released third-person action adventure Unknown 9: Awakening, have been hit by layoffs, according to a number of employees who made the cuts public on social media. The studio is owned by Bandai Namco and released the game about a month ago. The exact number of people out of work isn't known, as Reflector haven't made a public statement about it. (Update: A statement from Reflector says the layoffs amount to 18% of the total workforce). Among those affected are folks working in art, design, UI, lighting, and narrative.
]]>Thunderful Games, the developers and publishers that make the colourful SteamWorld series of games, have announced a hefty number of layoffs at the company, with anywhere between 80-100 people losing their jobs. It's part of a "restructuring" that'll also see an unspecified number of game projects cancelled, said the company in a press release yesterday. As if this is not dispiriting enough, they also say it's an intentional move that'll see them making fewer games of their own and instead publishing more work by other developers.
]]>Inflexion Games are closing their UK office, laying off staff and restructuring their main Canadian studio after failing to find commercial success with their Victorian fantasy survival game Nightingale. Reportedly, at least 22 people have been let go.
]]>Riot Games are cutting more jobs at their studios, the company announced today. This is the second time in a year the League of Legends developer has laid off workers. Chairman and co-founder of Riot, Marc Merrill, made the announcement yesterday, claiming that by cutting these jobs the company was "evolving League" and "investing heavily in solving today’s challenges". A total of 32 people have lost their jobs, mostly workers on League of Legends, according to a figure the developer gave to our sister site Eurogamer.
]]>In March, the CEO of Embracer announced that the company's widespread removal of workers across their many owned studios was over. That has turned out to be false, as the megacorp continues to enforce layoffs and close down studios. Now, a support studio for Diablo IV and Tiny Tina's Wonderlands has suffered further layoffs, with over half the employees at the studio losing their jobs.
]]>Facebook and Oculus Rift owners Meta are reportedly closing Ready At Dawn Studios, the outfit behind the excellent Echo VR and Lone Echo games, as part of wider reductions at the company's Reality Labs division.
]]>Bungie have reportedly cancelled Payback, an unannounced project in the Destiny universe from former Destiny 2 game director Luke Smith and project lead Mark Noseworthy. Both Noseworthy and Smith appear to have lost their jobs in the course of Bungie's brutal cost-cutting this week, but Payback's cancellation pre-dates the layoffs. Envisaged as a Destiny spin-off, rather than Destiny 3, it was apparently dropped "a while ago".
]]>This week's mass layoffs at Destiny studio Bungie were planned out months ago, former employees have told journalist Stephen Totilo at Game File (paywalled). According to Totilo, Bungie leadership "overstated their studio’s financial prospects to Sony" after the latter bought Bungie in 2022 for $3.6 billion. The latest cuts were necessary to prevent continued losses, says the report, after Bungie missed Sony’s targets following the release of last year’s Lightfall.
]]>Destiny and Marathon developers Bungie are laying off 220 people - around 17% of their total workforce - as studio heads try to offset a financial crisis brought on by "overly ambitious" expansion, individual project "misfires", and a wider economic downturn in 2023. Bungie are also transferring a further 155 roles to parent company Sony Interactive Entertainment, and are spinning out an untitled incubation project - an "action game set in a brand-new science-fantasy universe" - to form a new PlayStation studio.
]]>All 36 employees of Humble Games publishing have reportedly been laid off. According to business developer Nicola Kwan, staff were informed at 9am this morning, and told that “the company is shutting down.” Humble dispute this in a statement made to Game Developer, claiming that the publishing label is "undergoing restructuring," as opposed to a full shutdown.
Humble’s statement - which you can read in full here - attributes the events to “challenging economic times for indie game publishing,” saying that “Humble Games has made the difficult but necessary decision to restructure our operations.”
]]>The studio-killing fallout of Embracer's acquisition frenzy continues to fall like ash on the industry. The publishing giant has reportedly closed Piranha Bytes, the studio known for cult RPGs like Gothic, Risen, and Elex, according to a worker who spoke to Polish games site CD-Action. The studio's existence had been under threat since early this year, after being targeted in Embracer's purgatorial studio massacre. At that time the German studio were hopeful to avoid being closed down, insisting "don't write us off yet!" Unfortunately, it looks like those who worked at the studio have since been laid off.
]]>A phoenix is a mythological firebird that is periodically reborn from its own ashes, a symbol of cyclical renewal. It's also, according to several former employees of Chorus developers Fishlabs in Hamburg, an internal title for the massive cost-cutting project begun by Swedish conglomerate Embracer Group in June 2023.
The current incarnation of a bewildering series of mergers, renamings and acquisitions that date back to the founding of Nordic Games in 2004, Embracer have spent much of the past decade buying up video game studios and licenses, from Deus Ex developers Eidos Montreal to the adaptation rights for The Lords Of The Rings. According to a February 2023 earnings report, by the end of December 2022 the conglomerate had 134 internal studios on the books (including table-top developers) and owned or controlled over 850 IPs, with 224 games in development. Our Graham warned of the perils of such consolidation in 2019, and his misgivings have been borne out. Following the reported collapse of a billion dollar Savvy Games investment deal, Embracer set out to recover their debts by cancelling projects, laying off staff and closing whole studios. Fishlabs - acquired by Embracer in 2018 alongside their parent company Koch Media, nowadays Plaion - were among those burned by "Project Phoenix", first losing a dozen people in September 2023, and then around half their remaining workforce in November. In the process of these reductions, Embracer also binned off two video game projects – a sumptuous sci-fi metroidvania that was in full development, and a "visual prototype" for a brand new Red Faction game.
]]>The developers of Wizard With A Gun are closing down. Galvanic Games, who released the sandbox survival game last year, said that ongoing sales of the game were not enough to keep the studio going, and they'd run out of time to find funding for a new project.
]]>US labour union the CWA (Communications Workers of America) have filed Unfair Labor Practice charges against Activision QA supplier Lionbridge Technologies. As Game Developer reports, the CWA allege that Lionbridge fired an entire 160-person team in Idaho in retaliation for union-related activities.
]]>Former Microsoft senior PR manager Brad Hilderbrand has blogged about the recent closure of Tango Gameworks and Arkane Austin, making a familiar case that Microsoft’s gaming division are now expected “to cut expenses to the bone” in the wake of the wildly expensive acquisition of Activision Blizzard and amid slowing growth of the Game Pass subscription business. In Hilderbrand’s view, Game Pass will likely never be sustainable or profitable. Microsoft’s only chance on this front, he says, is “to put all the world's biggest games on the service” – namely, Call of Duty, which still earns hundreds of millions annually in direct sales, or GTA 6, which, hahahaha.
]]>Like us, you’re probably still reeling from Tuesday’s news that Hi-Fi Rush studio Tango and Prey’s Arkane Austin are getting shuttered by Microsoft. According to Bloomberg, these closures were just a part of a “widespread cost-cutting initiative” that’s still underway. All signs point towards more cuts to come, basically. ZeniMax studios seem to be the main target.
]]>Yesterday, coinciding with the release of the Thrones of Decay DLC, Total War: Warhammer 3 jumped 90 places in the Steam charts, trailed closely by the three lord packs that make up the strategy game's latest expansion. Those lord packs are now the three top rated expansions in the series’ history, and the base game itself saw a huge uptick in positive reviews. The last day also saw a peak player count of around 66,000, putting it ahead of giants like Palworld, Rimworld, and Fallout 76. None of this would be especially notable, however, if this wasn’t a complete turnaround from how things have been for the best part of a year now.
]]>The developers of sci-fi action-adventure Deliver Us Mars have laid off all their staff. The news was announced by KeokeN Interactive's leadership in a statement in which they state they have "exhausted all our possible options" of finding funding for a new project. They also say they plan to rebuild the company.
]]>Famed mass-layoff-manufacturing corporation Embracer Group are dividing into three companies, which will be listed separately on Sweden’s stock exchange. Those companies are: Asmodee Group, which comprises Embracer’s tabletop games biz; Coffee Stain & Friends, an evolution of the existing Coffee Stain publisher, who will pursue "a dual focus on indie and A/AA premium and free-to-play games for PC/console and mobile"; and Middle-earth Enterprises & Friends, “a creative powerhouse in AAA game development and publishing for PC and console, as well as the stewards of The Lord of the Rings and Tomb Raider intellectual properties, among many others”.
After writing roughly 100,000 posts about Embracer’s butchering of vast swathes of the games industry, this is surely my chance to raise a cheer and celebrate the conglomerate’s unglomming with a cool glass of turnip juice, but it is Monday, the man next door is shouting again, and I am tired - so tired that only ill-suited Simpsons references come to mind.
]]>The $70 release day price for standard AAA titles is both unsustainable and on the way out, claims Saber Interactive CEO Matthew Karch, via an interview with IGN reporter Rebekah Valentine.
Speaking to Valentine, Karch reckoned in public that the $70 game is “going to go the way of the dodo" because it isn't "sustainable". Here's the full chunk:
]]>According to one unofficial tracker created by video game artist Farhan Noor, there have been 8000 layoffs in 2024 so far, following an estimated 10,500 layoffs in 2023. The leaders of Microsoft, Embracer Group, Epic and other industry giants have made swingeing cuts to their workforces. While larger companies have inevitably seen the largest reductions, many smaller developers and publishers have also cut staff or even closed their doors. Circumstances vary by company, of course, but as regards the biggest publishers, there are some broad overlapping causes: reckless or, if you prefer, "overambitious" expansion and overhiring during the pandemic lockdown gaming boom; lower-than-hoped returns on new technologies and business models such as NFTs; and rising global interest rates, which have scared away potential investors.
The carnage was uppermost in Larian CEO's Swen Vincke's mind when he accepted Baldur's Gate 3's Best Narrative gong at the GDC Awards last month. According to Vincke, the layoffs can be traced straightforwardly to a pattern of executive greed that sees company leadership betting the livelihoods and stability of their workers on whatever new idea seems capable of delivering instant growth for shareholders.
]]>Relic Entertainment, the freshly-independent developers of Company of Heroes, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War and Age of Empires IV, have confirmed a number of job losses. The layoffs come just a week after the studio announced their sale from former owners Sega, returning them to independence after two decades.
]]>Earlier today, megacorp Embracer announced they were selling Borderlands developer Gearbox to Take-Two. During an investor call about the divestment, CEO Lars Wingefors confirmed that this brought an end to the restructuring process Embracer announced last year. He was also asked whether this meant Embracer had plans to start acquiring other studios again.
Wingefors said it was "way too early" to restart "the M&A engines."
]]>Sega Of America employees have become the first a major US video games studio to ratify a union contract. The contract covers guarantees minimum yearly pay increases for around 150 staff through 2026.
]]>In Shakespeare's Anthony And Cleopatra, said famous woman says "Give to a gracious message an host of tongues, but let ill tidings tell themselves when they be felt." I.e., when you have good news you can go round the houses, but if you have bad news - like sending an all-hands email to the staff at EA to let them know that, less than a year after the last round of layoffs, a further 5% of them are getting booted - then you should just come out and say it as quickly and simply as possible.
This is, apparently, not a sentiment ever internalised by Andrew Wilson, EA's CEO. Yesterday, when he announced to everyone at EA that a bunch of them were losing their jobs (again), he first spent three paragraphs talking about how EA is doing great, leading the industry, getting increasing engagement from fans, optimising their global footprint and sunsetting games oh yep, there it is, that's the "you're about to be unemployed" language right there. The company is moving away from "the development of future licensed IP" and toward "our owned IP, sports, and massive online communities". Therefore: 670 ish devs (by Eurogamer's count) must go.
]]>Another day, another videogame company jettisoning a large number of people "who have contributed to our success" so as to position themselves for growth in the face of "challenging times". Today it's Sony's turn with the axe: the PlayStation publisher have announced plans to reduce their global workforce by about 8% or 900 people, so as "to future ready ourselves to set the business up for what lies ahead", in the words of outgoing president and CEO Jim Ryan.
Several well-known PlayStation studios are affected, including The Last Of Us developer Naughty Dog, Ratchet & Clank developer Insomniac Games, Horizon developer Guerilla Games and PlayStation VR specialists Firesprite. It's also proposed that PlayStation close Sony London in their entirety, though the exact scale of the reductions remains to be seen.
]]>Supermassive Games have announced a period of consultation and reorganisation that will end in job losses, as the Until Dawn developers try "to ensure the continued sustainability of the company". It follows a report that studio leadership told 150 people their jobs were at risk earlier today, with around 90 staff expected to eventually leave the business following the consultation.
]]>Embracer have released their interim financial results for Q3, October-December 2023, in which they share details of the conglomerate's on-going efforts to "restructure" and reduce their massive debts, to the tune of hundreds of layoffs over the past year.
Amid the talk of revenues, profits and losses, we learn that Embracer have laid off 8% of their global workforce since announcing their restructuring program in June 2023. According to the report, Embracer's total headcount has fallen from 16,243 in the period October-December 2022 to 15,218 in the period October-December 2023. The number of Embracer studio game projects in development, meanwhile, has fallen from 224 to 179.
]]>The studio behind Homeworld 3, Homeworld: Deserts Of Kharak, and Hardspace: Shipbreaker have cut a number of jobs, explaining this is "part of a realignment plan that's necessary because of new projects that were shelved by some of our partners". Blackbird Interactive haven't confirmed the number of people who lost their jobs, nor have they said what the mystery projects were. It's been a grim year for people working in the video games industry, with thousands losing their jobs, and we're only halfway through February.
]]>Devolver Digital have confirmed they're cutting 28 people's jobs at Artificer, the Polish studio behind Showgunners, the turn-based tactics game about a dystopian murderous gameshow. Most are gone immediately, while some will stay on until Artificer release their yet-unannounced next game. Artificer were previously owned by Good Shepherd Entertainment, a publisher Devolver bought in 2021.
]]>Reikon Games, the developers behind cyberpunky top-down shooter Ruiner, have reportedly become the latest studio to lay off dozens of staff, with over half of the Polish indie said to have lost their jobs earlier this week.
]]>Given that Microsoft have spent considerable time and effort becoming the biggest cock-of-the-walk possible, it does, I suppose, make sense that their layoffs are correspondingly massive. In an internal memo obtained by The Verge, Phil Spencer is very sad to reveal to the staff that, in order to grow, the combined powers of Microsoft's 22k-strong Gaming Division have to be denuded to the tune of 1,900 human beings. That amounts to about 8% of the division.
]]>Virtual reality-focused developers Wimo Games have joined the ever-expanding list of studios to be hit by layoffs and closure in recent months, as the Battle Bows and Micro Machines: Mini Challenge Mayhem studio confirmed their closure last week.
]]>Embracer Group is once again doing sterling work to demonstrate the perils of consolidation. Piranha Bytes, who are one of well over a hundred studios that Embracer bought up in recent years, today posted a statement on Xitter saying "Don't write us off yet!". The statement goes on to say that they're "convinced they will succeed". Succeed at what, you might ask? Not being shut down by Embracer.
]]>About 20 years ago, a travel company declared this Monday just gone, the 15th, to be the most depressing day of the year. They call it Blue January. Enter yet more studio layoffs. 2023's trend continues with Dead By Daylight developer Behaviour Interactive getting rid of about 45 staff, per Kotaku, while CI Games has laid off 10% of its workforce, including from Lords Of The Fallen studio Hexworks and Sniper Ghost Warrior studio Underdog (via GI.Biz).
]]>A round of videogame company layoffs following a period of "unsustainable" spending? It must be a Wednesday. Swedish conglomerate Thunderful Group AB - whose corporate possessions include Somerville developer Jumpship and several teams working on the SteamWorld games - have announced that they will lay off around 20 percent of their staff as part of a restructuring program that "stems primarily from over-investments made in the last few years".
]]>It’s time for another pull on the velvet rope labelled “too many games”. In fairness, this time the argument is a touch more involved than perennial moaning about backlogs – to whit, “there are too many games and it’s all the pandemic’s fault”. Nacon’s head of publishing Benoit Clerc has argued that the Covid lockdown years have bred too much investment in new games, and that we’re currently reaping the results in the form of an unsustainable glut of releases.
]]>Amazon-owned Twitch have announced that they will lay off "just over 500" people - almost 35% of their workforce - in the course of on-going plans to "rightsize our company", with CEO Dan Clancy conceding that the streaming service has been operating based on "where we optimistically expect our business to be in 3 or more years, not where we're at today."
]]>Versus Evil, the publisher behind The Banner Saga and Pillars Of Eternity 2, among others, has been closed down and its entire staff laid off. Versus Evil were bought by tinyBuild in November 2021.
]]>Ah, man, this one really stings. League Of Geeks, the developers behind Armello and the upcoming Solium Infernum remake, have announced they've had to pause the development of their spaceship colony roguelike Jumplight Odyssey "indefinitely" as the studio faces mass redundancies. Over 50% of staff have been affected, including the entire Jumplight Odyssey team, and part of their publishing and operations teams.
]]>Humble Games, the Humble Bundle-owned label responsible for publishing indie hits including Slay the Spire, Signalis, Unpacking, Temtem and this year’s recently Grammy-nominated RPG musical Stray Gods, have confirmed a number of layoffs.
]]>505 Games parent company Digital Bros have announced - you guessed it - a round of mass layoffs. Following in the wake of Microsoft, Epic, CD Projekt, Sony and, well, take your pick, the company aim to cut roughly 30% of their workforce to shore up profits. The specific reasoning here is that Digital Bros think that people aren't interested in playing original new games; they'd rather get to grips with fictions and franchises they know and love already. As such, the company plan to "limit" their big budget projects in future, though no specific cancellations have been announced.
]]>Unity have said that they expect to lay off staff in the coming months, following the engine maker’s catastrophic rollout of their new pricing plan earlier this year and as they turn towards a more “focused” offering, including the likes of AI, for growth.
]]>Resurrected TimeSplitters developers Free Radical Design could be the next Embracer-owned studio to be shuttered, according to recent reports. The rumoured closure comes just two years after the veteran British label were resurrected by their original founders to work on a new TimeSplitters game.
]]>Cryptic Studios, the makers of MMOs including Star Trek Online and Dungeons & Dragons MMORPG Neverwinter, have confirmed a number of layoffs due to the ongoing “comprehensive restructuring” of megacorp owner Embracer Group. The “personnel changes” at Cryptic make them the latest Embracer-owned developer to suffer job losses in what continues to be an unrelenting year for thousands of those working in video games.
]]>2023's mass eradication of the games industry continues with reports of layoffs at Sony Interactive Entertainment and PlayStation Studios. It's unclear how extensive these losses are - Sony have yet to provide comment, at the time of writing - but they appear to include staff at PlayStation's Visual Arts studio, based in San Diego, which supports developers like The Last of Us creators Naughty Dog and Spider-Man 2 creators Insomniac.
]]>Frontier Developments have announced that they'll be undertaking an "organisationl review" of the company after "disappointing financial performance and more challenging industry conditions". The news came yesterday in a note to investors, signalling yet another wave of industry layoffs.
]]>Dragon Age and Mass Effect’s storied developer BioWare have laid off around 50 employees, including veteran devs who had been with the company for 20 years, in what they call a “shift towards a more agile and more focused studio.” The reasoning behind the job cuts has a now-rote focus on efficiency that sadly echoes other redundancy announcements from this year - including ones from other widely admired studios like Firaxis and CD Projekt Red.
]]>CD Projekt Red have announced another batch of layoffs, this time affecting “around 100” employees, or roughly 9% of the company’s total headcount. The redundancies won’t take place immediately, according to CDPR, as some employees won’t lose their jobs until early next year at the latest.
]]>Scavengers Studio have laid off more than half their staff after photography-biking adventure Season: A Letter To The Future failed to meet commercial expectations. In an email to employees shared with GamesIndustry.biz, CEO Amélie Lamarche said “the game only sold 60,000 copies during its first five months, which falls far short of what the studio needs to survive.” Lamarche notes that discounts, critical praise, and game updates didn’t move the needle, and now only 16 employees are left at the studio after downsizing.
]]>Embracer Group, the corp who've spent several years buying up dozens of video game studios, today announced a financial restructuring that will involve closing studios, cancelling games, and laying off employees. They say this will leave them a "stronger, more efficient company". Their purchases include Gearbox, Crystal Dynamics, Volition, the rights to The Lord Of The Rings, and so many more. Embracer own 138 studios and have over 16,500 people working for them, and it's not clear how many will remain afterwards.
]]>Sega have laid off 121 employees working at Relic Entertainment, the studio behind Age Of Empires 4 and the Company Of Heroes series. Today's news comes three months after the studio released Company Of Heroes 3, although Sega points to the “external factors [that] are challenging our industry” as one reason behind the job cuts.
]]>Electronic Arts has become the latest tech company to suffer mass layoffs. Today the publisher announced a new “restructuring” which will impact roughly 6% of their total workforce, or over 700 employees if an SEC filing from March 2022 is any estimate.
]]>More than 60 developers at Call Of Duty: Warzone studio Raven Software reportedly held a walkout yesterday to protest Activision laying off quality assurance testers. On Friday, the studio let 12 contractors go due to restructuring, which is said to be around a third of the QA team.
"This has not only destroyed the morale of our workforce, but obliterated trust in the company that has been routinely asking us for patience in improving our work lives," said employee group ABetterABK.
]]>Update: Hardsuit Labs have confirmed the layoffs, saying they were "unable to provide work for a small number of individuals". More below. (Original story from March 2nd)
Hardsuit Labs, the studio that worked on Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2, appears to have laid off a number of staff. Multiple employees took to Twitter last night to reveal they'd lost their jobs, and it seems the entire narrative team have been affected. This comes just a week after Paradox Interactive announced Hardsuit would no longer be developing Bloodlines 2.
]]>Three unions that represent Blizzard employees in France called for a strike yesterday, following Activision Blizzard's decision to shut their office near Versailles. It's a move that potentially puts hundreds of jobs at risk. The unions claim the company "repeatedly denied" the closure plans, but suspect they've actually been planning it for a while.
"In 15 years, many of us left their homes from across Europe and beyond to join the company, people truly invested their whole lives into Blizzard success," they said. "This comes as a shock for employees who were not expecting that announcement."
]]>Activision Blizzard, the mega publisher behind the likes of Overwatch and Call Of Duty, are reportedly shutting down their office near Versailles, France. According to Bloomberg, employees at the company will learn more about the closure next week, but at the moment it's unclear when exactly it'll happen, or how many people might lose their jobs in the process.
]]>There's bad news ahead for Shodan fans - System Shock 3 might be in trouble after numerous members of the development team have parted ways with OtherSide Entertainment. Rumours suggest that the entire development team might have been laid off. At the very least, several senior devs have confirmed they no longer work at the company.
]]>H1Z1 and PlanetSide 2 developers Daybreak Game Company went through another round of layoffs yesterday, though the number of employees affected is unknown. This is the third wave since the beginning of 2018.
]]>Amazon’s video game studio have laid off “dozens” of employees, according to a report by Kotaku’s Jason Schreier. They’ve also cancelled some unannounced projects, saying that they want to “prioritise development” of the supernatural colonialist America simulator New World, 12-player, class-based battle royale-alike Crucible, and some other projects that aren’t yet unveiled.
]]>2019 continues to be a rubbish year for job stability in the industry, as Electronic Arts have laid off 350 people, mostly in marketing and publishing, and their overseas offices. Kotaku got hold of an internal e-mail to employees from CEO Andrew Wilson stating that the cuts were to "streamline decision-making in the marketing and publishing departments". I can only hope that there's a similarly streamlined path to new jobs available to those areas hit, especially those in EA's Japanese and Russian offices, which are facing closure.
]]>GOG, the DRM-free games store owned by CD Projekt, have confirmed they laid off "around a dozen" people last week. GOG say it's no problem, they're just reorganising, and that they're hiring more than they let go. One of the affected employees has whispered that these layoffs made up 10% of GOG's staff, and that the company may be in more financial trouble than they publicly let on. All we know for certain is that some folks have been shown the door.
]]>Machinima, the vast video #content network which started life in the year 2000 as a site covering short films people made inside games, has shut down and laid off a reported 81 employees. This news is little surprise after Machinima hid most their videos on YouTube in January. This news still sucks for the people who lost their jobs, those who had years of their work vanish from the Internet, and the millions of folks who watched 'em too.
]]>Stardock's Star Control: Origins has been pulled from sale on Steam and GOG following a copyright claim from the lead developers of the first two games in the spacefaring RPG series. Stardock did file a preliminary injunction to preemptively block any such attempts from Fred Ford and Paul Reiche III, but a judge denied that. By releasing Star Control: Origins despite knowing that the copyright was contested, the judge ruled last week, "the harm [Stardock] complains of is indeed of its own making." Stardock claim they'll need to lay off some staff now that income's halted.
Update: Stardock are now selling Star Control: Origins direct through their own store.
]]>Daybreak Game Company, the H1Z1 and PlanetSide 2 mob formerly known as Sony Online Entertainment, have laid off an unconfirmed number of staff. It's the second wave of layoffs at Daybreak this year, and a real tough time to be laid off. It's the usual "optimising our structure" sort of reason. Daybreak say they'll continue to run their current and are working on new games too.
]]>Following yesterday's initial reports that Telltale Games were effectively shutting down, the studio behind licensed story 'em ups including The Walking Dead and Batman: The Enemy Within have confirmed the bad news. All but 25 Telltale employees have been let go (that's 250-ish people gone, former members report), cut down to a skeleton crew to "fulfil the company's obligations to its board and partners." The studio say they've had "a year marked by insurmountable challenges." Telltale haven't yet confirmed quite what will happen to their past, present, and future games, saying they'll talk about their portfolio "in the coming weeks", but I wouldn't expect much more from them. What a sorry mess.
]]>Hangar 13 gave the world open-ended crime caper Mafia III, a game that is at once a formulaic GTA-style action game, and an impressive slice of the American South in the 1960s (with a few fictionalised elements letting the team interpret New Orleans a little more loosely). It seemed to do pretty well sales-wise but today the chances of a Hangar 13-developed follow-up appear dim. The studio has been hit with substantial layoffs.
]]>Following a difficult year, Sunless Sea and Fallen London devs Failbetter have battened down the hatches and scaled back some of their plans, including laying off several members of staff and delaying Sunless Skies. Part of the problem is early access sales of the encounter-unspeakable-cosmic-horrors-then-eat-your-crew space survive-o-exploration RPG sequel have been lower than expected. The small English studio assure that they will finish Sunless Skies but they want to be sure they'll be safe to fund another game beyond that, so they've made a few cautious cuts.
]]>The owners of Torchlight developers Runic Games, the Chinese free-to-play-focused publisher Perfect World Entertainment, confirmed today that it has shut down Runic's Seattle studio. Seeing as that's Runic's only studio, er, that's them basically gone - though their games will live on. This comes barely one month after Runic released Hob.
Perfect World have also laid off most the team at Motiga, the studio behind Gigantic - which only launched in July. Perfect World say these are unconnected but sheesh, not a good week to be owned by Perfect World.
]]>Less than one fortnight after Square Enix announced they were ditching IO Interactive, IO have announced a round of layoffs. While that's no surprise, it is certainly a shame. We still don't know what the future holds for the Danish studio, who are best known for their Hitman games, and the path forward is looking bumpy. Squeenix had said they'd try to find new investors in IO to replace them, but we've not yet heard much on how that's working out. Initial impressions: not entirely great. Fingers crossed, everyone.
]]>Scribblenauts developers 5th Cell have laid off 45 employees but, contrary to initial reports, the company say they're not closing down. 5th Cell had been working on a new mobile version of Scribblenauts, their series about solving free-form puzzles by drawing almost anything into existence, but its surprise cancellation left them overstaffed. The situation's a bit unclear at this point, but they had also been working on a free-to-play PC action-RPG.
]]>Toll the Bell of Lost Souls. Full Control, the folks most recently behind Space Hulk Ascension and Jagged Alliance Flashback, has stopped making games. The Danish studio ran into financial trouble and will soon only exist as a far smaller company selling and supporting their games. Current plans for DLC, updates, and ports are still in effect, but it's unclear how much we'll see from them or how they'll exist after that.
]]>At this rate, Trion Worlds might soon be forced to change its name to Trion Islands, or maybe Trion Small Yet Charming Spanish Getaway Vacation Villa. After the Rift team got hit by a major round of layoffs late last year, Defiance's band of trigger finger scratchers has taken a possibly even bigger hit. While the exact number is unconfirmed, many reports place the total at around 100, which is a worrisomely not-small portion of the entire company. For its part, Trion has confirmed the unfortunate turn of events, but it's been illusive otherwise. The company's statement is after the break, in addition to a few further details.
]]>Too often, I wonder if the gaming industry shouldn't just switch over to producing new versions of musical chairs and duck-duck-goose full-time. It does, after all, seem to be what we're best at. Projects wrap, publishers "restructure," and the unemployment line has to change the hinges on its revolving door. Again. This year, especially, has been viciously unkind on the layoff and closures front, and after a brief reprieve, it looks like the infernal old machine is whirring back to life. EA's now confirmed a major round of layoffs of its own, though it won't divulge exact numbers or details as to who's been affected. Sources, however, are putting the grand total in the hundreds.
]]>Activision has promised to stop making terrible games. Well, okay, that's not quite true. But they've said to Kotaku that this year they're planning to release "fewer games based on license properties", which is publisher speak for, "Good lord, that James Bond game was terrible." This coincides with the announcement that the company is laying off 30 employees, thought to affect CODBLOPS developers, Treyarch.
]]>Gabe Newell has told Engadget that, despite the speculation (including our own) that a hardware project may have been cancelled, that Valve haven't cancelled any ongoing projects at all, and that's the the reason behind their having let some staff go. He added, "We're not going to discuss why anyone in particular is or isn't working here."
]]>"Will it ever actually come out, though?" is a question that's often asked of many Kickstarter-funded games, but not like this. In the blink of an eye, Gas Powered Games' Wildman went from fossil-fueled hopeful to dinosaur with a very large meteor breathing down its neck. After 40-some-odd layoffs, Chris Taylor was left reconsidering if it was even worthwhile to gamble the rest of his company on the project at all. So he asked the community. And now, after a few days of deliberation, it's time for a verdict.
]]>Right then, let me try laying this one out on paper, because I'm still having a hard time comprehending it. So, a few days ago, Chris Taylor and Gas Powered Games announced a rather massive Kickstarter. Wildman, they said, would need $1.1 million in its tank before it could get off the ground, but they had it all planned out. So we got some gameplay footage, and everything seemed to be proceeding apace - minus, perhaps, the Kickstarter itself, which was acting less prehistoric hare beast and more tribal tortoise mutant. But apparently, that wasn't good enough. So now, mere days after kicking off its Kickstarter, Gas Powered Games is kicking most of its employees to the curb. And according to Chris Taylor, Wildman's Kickstarter might end up on the chopping block as well.
]]>In modern society, we tend to throw around the phrase "worst day ever" pretty loosely. Stubbed your toe? Worst day ever. Forgot to have "the help" restock your yacht with perfectly chilled bottles of imported Mars water? Worst day ever. Looked on helplessly as you and nearly 250 other talented individuals in your line of work suddenly found yourselves jobless? OK, now we're getting somewhere. That's today's unfortunate tale, straight from the frontlines of struggling social behemoth Zynga and Battlestar Galactica Online creator Bigpoint. Details after the break.
]]>As we know, random events segregate 'non-randomly', and things bunching together isn't a trend. But it's still pretty chilling to see so many lay-offs in the games industry all at once. So we express our sympathies and best wishes to those at Funcom, PopCap, and THQ who've found out their jobs are no longer in the last few hours.
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