Posts tagged “layoffs”

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…

Tagged with Activision, Activision Blizzard, Blizzard Entertainment, layoffs, strike.

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.

Tagged with Activision, Activision Blizzard, Blizzard Entertainment, layoffs.

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.

Tagged with layoffs, OtherSide Entertainment, rumour, Starbreeze, System Shock, System Shock 2, System Shock 3.

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.

Tagged with Daybreak Game Company, layoffs, H1Z1, H1Z1: Just Survive, H1Z1: King of the Kill, PlanetSide 2, PlanetSide Arena.

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.

Tagged with #business, Amazon Game Studios, layoffs, Crucible, New World.

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…

Tagged with #business, Electronic Arts, layoffs.

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…

Tagged with #business, CD Projekt, gog, layoffs.

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…

Tagged with #business, AT&T, layoffs, machinima, Otter Media, YouTube.

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…

Tagged with Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Fred Ford, gog, lawsuit, layoffs, Paul Reiche III, Stardock, Steam, Star Control, Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters, Star Control: Origins.

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…

Tagged with Daybreak Game Company, layoffs, DC Universe Online, Dungeons & Dragons Online, EverQuest, EverQuest II, The Lord of the Rings Online.

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…

Tagged with #business, layoffs, Telltale Games, Batman: The Enemy Within - The Telltale Series, Minecraft: Story Mode - A Telltale Games Series, Minecraft: Story Mode - Season 2, Puzzle Agent, Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, Tales from the Borderlands, The Walking Dead, The Walking Dead: The Final Season, The Wolf Among Us, The Wolf Among Us 2.

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…

Tagged with Failbetter Games, layoffs, Fallen London, Sunless Sea, Sunless Skies.

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…

Tagged with layoffs, Motiga, Perfect World, Runic Games, Gigantic, Hob, torchlight.

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…

Tagged with IO Interactive, layoffs, Hitman, Square Enix.

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…

Tagged with 5th Cell, layoffs, Warner Bros., Scribblenauts.

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…

Tagged with full control, layoffs, Space Hulk, Space Hulk Ascension Edition.

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…

Tagged with Defiance, layoffs, Trion Worlds, Rift.

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…

Tagged with Electronic Arts, layoffs.

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.

Tagged with Activision, layoffs.

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."

Tagged with Gabe Newell, layoffs, Valve.