"About 20 people were laid-off from Firaxis, the creators of Civilization V, parent company 2K confirmed to Kotaku today."
http://m.kotaku.com/5582531/layoffs-hit-civilization-v-creators
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/07/08/firestoppers-lay-offs-at-firaxis/
Maybe Stardock should hire the laid off guys and have them work for Elemental
Gee, that's good news. Not.
Best regards,Steven.
2K with Civ V- you can see 2K sucking the soul out of Firaxis. I hope they Respawn somewhere.
Well the normal development cycle at big game companies is like this.
Work hard, drive the people into the ground to create the game. Massive crunches, during the final days before everything that is critical is taken care of.
And as soon as the ratio of cost vs benefit comes in. There is the cycled axe.
And in this case it is said it's across a bunch of different departments.
Though the quoted text...
Markus Wilding, global public relations director for 2K, tells Kotaku is was about 20 people.
"I can confirm that Firaxis has realigned its development resources in order to streamline its development process, reduce costs and maximize the overall performance the studio," Wilding told Kotaku. "This will result in the elimination of approximately 20 positions. These reductions will not impact Firaxis' ability to create and deliver AAA titles, including its forthcoming Sid Meier's Civilization V and Sid Meier's Civilization Network for Facebook."
Meaning, they did the job and weren't needed as they are no longer core to the needs of the bottom line. And we fired them. We don't need 10 quality assurance testers, so they get the axe. And the art department, the low guys on the totem pole were let go, and so on.
It's par for the course at those game development companies.
Now the consolation prize is, I've not heard of anything like that for Stardock. They seem to just transition those folks back over to other projects. And maybe they do lay off some extra testers, but I think they've utilized the beta testers efficiently as an external testing force, that in turn has made their games much better, and the relationship from Company to Customer is just outstanding.
That said, I do hope those who've been let go find a good home, that hopefully is more stable in the long run.
this is pretty normal for games. As a game approaches "gold" you don't need to have some of the same low-level programmers.
Flexible labour markets and capitalism at work. Yuk.
Like so many stated. Thats pretty much the "norm' for gaming companies.
As a game goes gold, the get rid of some staff that is not needed for the game.
"Flexible labour markets and capitalism at work. Yuk." Love it or leave it!
Cause Commies make better games?! Better dead than Red!
These companies get what they pay for. Employees that know they're going to be canned after the project are not going to put much effort into things. I think C&C4 is a pretty good example of quality suffering in this regard. The managers can try to hide the layoffs of course, but if it keeps happening so consistantly it's not hard for the low ranking employees to know their fates after the bulk of the work is done. Disposabel employees may be good for the bottom line, but I think it's one of the major reasons why many modern games just seem to lacking compared to older ones. It the company doesn't care about their employees, the employess don't care about the quality of their work.
I disagree. I know quite a few people in games development, and every single one of them prides themselves on the quality of work they output. That has nothing to do with it.
disagreed... the gaming business is like this.. they know that if they do a superb job and create an awesome game, it helps them get better and better jobs. It's like football players trying to win the super bowl even though their contract might end @ the end of the season and they know they're getting transferred off the team or something similar.
You know, being laid off after a short working period does not look that good on a resume. It also signals that you were a non-essential worker, and therefore didn't do anything terribly important for that awesome game.
Bigger companies tend to have far more significant turnover, for some reason. It really makes no sense; perhaps you save on the bottom line by terminating the position in the meantime, but six to twelve months later you're hiring again, which is a huge gamble because you really don't know the kind of skill you're getting (especially for more junior positions).
My dad's a business owner, and he sooner cuts back his own paycheck than layoff staff for economic reasons. It may hurt in the meantime, but the bottom line is that it'll cost him more to hire and train new staff at a later point in time.
It's partly a surplus problem as well. When I was in high school the idiot councellors kept pushing computers, computers, computers. Well now there's so many people with Comp-Sci degrees that programmers are getting minimum wage in some areas. There will be a turnaround point though. Kids in high school see and hear the treatment of programmers by these big companies, and the number of Comp-Sci applicants will drop sharply. Soon EA and such will not be able to throw away employees at the end of their projects as they will have trouble finding new ones, and the status-quo will level off.
Right. I'm guessing you're too young to know what Tetris is.
I would say that experience (in programming but also in knowing your colleagues) is extremely important. If you rebuild your organization all the time, then a lot will be lost in the process.
The second time you do a big project with the same team it will be a lot more efficient, but not if you rebuild constantly.
Sounds strange to me this, but maybe cause I am from socialist Norway (and no, socialism isnt communism).
Well, looks like I won't need to inquire about my resume I sent them...
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