Game studios laying off developers, particularly after a big release or even more sadly, a failed project, is all too common in the contemporary industry. After word swirled that Edios Montreal laid off anywhere between 20 to 50 employees, publisher Square Enix confirmed that 27 people lost their jobs.
This is the full statement from Square Enix, as reported by Kotaku:
"Yes it is true we've let 27 people go today, unfortunately it's something that every major studio has to do sometimes in order to ensure you have the right set up for current and future projects. It's never a nice thing to do but we are genuinely trying to offer as much support as much as we can.
"We're trying to re-locate as many people as possible into other roles here or at our other studios and we've been in touch several studios in Montreal to arrange a career day for those affected by this. We're very thankful for all their hard work and we sincerely wish them well."
The news follows the middling reception of the recently-released Thief 4, which reportedly had some trouble during development. I personally hope the negative or lukewarm reviews themselves didn't play too major of a part in these decisions and there were no Metacritic-related incentives built in to their contracts.
We've recently had a number of programmers and designers lose their jobs in the industry, most recently in the layoffs related to the winding down of Bioshock developer Irrational Games. We wish them and the Eidos employees the best of luck in quickly finding new employment.
