Layoffs are incredibly common in the gaming industry and every several months a new wave of them seem to hit, often in the wake of successful games, which makes this facet of the business so peculiar. It’s typically touted as an effort to stay profitable or couched in peppy and optimistic talking points about how a given brand is redirecting its vision for the future or restructuring or any other buzzy sounding way to deflect from the fact a lot of people just lost their source of income.
The newest wave of these is coming out of Avalanche Studios who just released Mad Max and is about to put out Just Cause 3 in less than a month. Job cuts for the company actually began at the main offices in Stockholm several months ago, but this second round of layoffs also includes the offices in New York.
"The transition between major projects is always challenging, especially for independent developers," the company told GameInformer "We have just completed one project and are currently wrapping up another. In starting up our new projects, we were not able to perfectly match the team sizes and skill sets of the previous ones, and we unfortunately had to let some talented developers go. 12 developers were given notice in New York. There was a similar number of notices given this summer in Stockholm, but right now we are in the process of rehiring some of those who left. We expect to keep hiring in the new year. This unfortunate event does not affect any of our current projects, and we're taking measures to avoid situations like this in the future."
Even though this practice seemingly has become SOP for the industry on the whole, it’s hard not to feel badly for those who commit so much time and effort creating the games we love. Completing a project should be a celebration, but for a lot of those doing the work, it probably has just become a starting point for anxiety.
