Avalanche Studios Wipes 20 From Its Workforce
Avalanche Studios, developers of upcoming multiplatform game Just Cause 2, has announced that they have given roughly 20 employees three month’s notice that they will be laid off. Yet despite the large layoff (this would be roughly a fifth of their supposed workforce), Just Cause 2 is still on track to be released sometime in Q3 2009.
CEO Christofer Sundberg had this to say with regards to the planned layoffs:
“It is a difficult business climate, but this is not nearly on the scale of the redundancies last year…As any other company we need to manage risks and sometimes that unfortunately means that we have to give notice and lay off staff. It’s not more complicated than that.”
The “redundancies last year” he is referring to is last October, when 77 staff members were laid off. Publisher Eidos has also confirmed that Just Cause 2 will continue development. The company is also continuing work on “The Hunter,” a free-to-play PC game, and a third untitled game which already has secured a publisher.
[Source]
7 Responses to “Avalanche Studios Wipes 20 From Its Workforce”
It’s sad to read stuff like this.
Damn. Yeah Zema. This current economic situation is kicking everyone around.
man that sux
These people have bills…families to feed, etc… Such bad times.
Terrible news, but wouldn’t it be ironic if they asked for a reason why they were fired and the bosses shrugged and casually said, “meh – just cause”
@Stalk – lol
sucks to lose a job, that parts not funny. The game industry is similar to the film industry in that you ramp up staff during production, and ramp down towards the end. So it’s not that surprising, if the game is good things will get better.
Really bad news.
Sorry to hear that.