Tag: Layoffs

Biting The Hand That Once Fed You: Realtime Worlds Edition


Absolut Peach Bodka

“APB itself only really came together technically relatively late in its development cycle (and it still obviously has problems), leaving too little time for content production and polish, and lacking any real quality in some of its core mechanics (shooting / driving). It’s not that the team was unaware of these huge issues, but a million little things conspire to prevent you from being able to do anything about them.”
-Anonymous Realtime Worlds ex-employee

Thanks to the wonders of the internet and anonymity, when a company lays off a whole lot of people, we have the avenue for them to anonymously reveal exactly what was going on at said company that lead to said layoffs. The above anonymous ex-employee makes a lot of good points as to why All Points Bulletin performed the way it did in the market, most importantly below:

“They also failed spectacularly to manage expectations. When Dave J spoke out saying there would ‘not be a standard subscription model’, he unwittingly set expectations at ‘free to play’. When it’s announced that we’re essentially pay-per-hour, we get absolutely killed in the press, somewhat understandably.”

Luke Halliwell is not, on the other hand, afraid of sticking his name and face out to give his grief about Realtime Worlds. In his blog, he notes:

There had been mounting discontent internally about the competence of our top management – and what better proof could you need than this. How they could keep operating the company when they couldn’t even pay this month’s wages, I don’t know.  Presumably they continued to think we had a chance somehow; the behaviour of a deluded, greedy, addicted gambler.

His wife, Lucy, who posted in the comment section was not as restrained, especially when the subject comes to feeding their family and owed wages:

“Dave Jones and Ian Hetherington have pissed away millions, they are getting away with not paying over 200 employees for the work that they have done and have fiddled their way to being able to buy back Project:MyWorld for cheap. Moreover these very people have enough personal wealth to pay the money owed to the individuals and families whose lives they have left shattered, heck Dave could probably pay them all just by selling one of his beloved cars. So I’m more than a little pissed off, but mothers get like that when their kids are hurting.”

We here at MMO Fallout (me) wish the best for everyone at Realtime Worlds, as well as their ex employees. More on APB as it appears.

Realtime Worlds: APB Is Our Focus


Absolut Para Burros

Realtime Worlds has released a press statement over the recent rumors that the MyWorld team has been cut, as well as cuts for the company’s MMO, All Points Bulletin. Colin Macdonald offered Develop-Online a few words regarding this past weekend at Realtime Worlds.

“The supporting infrastructure for a game inevitably changes once released, and those staff that couldn’t be redeployed to new projects in the Art, Audio, Coding, Design, Production, and QA departments have regrettably been made redundant.”

On the note of Project MyWorld, it appears as if the studio has not been cut completely, although they have seen a hit in staff. Unfortunately for the team, however, Realtime Worlds is still struggling to find a publisher for the upcoming title. According to Macdonald, the team is still looking at options.

But what about All Points Bulletin and the rumors that Realtime Worlds was looking to ship off the team?

“We’re completely behind APB, it’s got huge potential, and we’ll continue to make new content for it.”

More on All Points Bulletin as it appears.

CapnLogan: The Star Trek Online Team Is Shrinking.


Set Phasers To Reduction!

Getting a Cryptic member to post on the official forums is not exactly an impossible task, many of them do it on a daily basis. On the Star Trek Online forums, CapnLogan (of the Cryptic Logans) went on to explain his work on saucer separation, among other updates he had planned and others which could be planned (if the users complained enough, wink wink). When a user asked if certain updates were being delayed due to polygon restrictions or time allotment, he responded:

“So it’s not so much polygon budgets, or data budgets, but I’d say that it’s mostly because our team is shrinking, and we still have to continue to put out a lot of other content for the future, that it will be really hard for me to get the political pull to get a couple programmers, an FX guy, and myself a couple weeks to make new models for this cause.”

The extent to Cryptic shrinking the Star Trek Online team is yet to be seen, or in what areas, and how this is affecting development (because as CapnLogan has point out, it is clearly affecting development). MMO Fallout will be looking for some specific information to add on to this article.

More on Star Trek Online, and Cryptic’s other MMOs, as it appears.

Sony Online Entertainment Layoffs Detailed


Sony Online Entertainment

Earlier I reported on Sony handing out the pink slips to 35 unnamed employees dispersed to several different projects (to ensure the public that they were not targeting one specific game), and if you assumed Vanguard was among the layoffs, you would be correct. A few ex-Sony employees have chimed in on the forums, confirming the layoffs and reporting that among the games affected are mainly Everquest II, Vanguard, and The Agency. Only a few of the employees were actually named, including Joel Sasaki, the Vanguard Community Manager, as well as Brett Scheinert, the man responsible for the Everquest II: Sentinel’s Fate raid design.

Best of luck to those affected. MMO Fallout will continue covering MMO developers, through the good and bad.

Josh Drescher: Laid Off, Still Loves Warhammer Online


TERA Time!

Perhaps he will go to work at Bioware? Between Mythic’s billing server exploding, the shut down of their merchandise store, and last November’s announcement of server mergers and massive layoffs (40%), you would think that the news couldn’t get any worse. Well, it did. Josh Drescher, producer of Warhammer Online, posted on his twitter account that he has been laid off, and cannot give any more details. His twitter post reads:

FYI: I can’t get into details (and, in fact, don’t HAVE many more details), but it was a layoff. I wasn’t fired and I still love Mythic.

Many of you may remember Drescher from the video podcasts for Warhammer Online created before and after release. But Josh does have a word for all of you who take this as a sign Warhammer Online is dying:

Quick note, then I’m going offline for a while: WAR isn’t dying. The game is better now than ever before and more goodness is on the way.

Even though it’s not my baby anymore, I’m proud of what it’s become and want the team’s hard work to be rewarded moving forward.

It’s good to see no (public) hard feelings between Drescher and Mythic. More on Warhammer Online as it gets laid off.

Fallen Earth: Do Not Fear 80% Layoffs


Holding Out

Layoffs post-launch are not new in the MMO world. Once an MMO has launched, and most of the post-launch bugs are taken care of, a large part of the team (many working under contract rather than full employment) are let go. Think of it as seasonal work, but working on a video game rather than stocking shelves at a Wal Mart around Christmas time. A lot of people are not aware of this factor, however:

So when the announcement came that Icarus was restructuring and had laid off a reported 80% of their staff, I was not all too surprised. In an interview with Massively, Marketing Manager Jessica Orr revealed that a team of 110 employees was reduced to around 35, not including GMs, customer service, and (assumed) janitorial staff. Orr also doused rumors that the impending layoffs were the reason Lee Hammock had resigned, noting that he was offered a position at another company. Oh and future updates should not be impacted.

So there you have it. Fallen Earth is triple A and here to stay! As NCwest’s President put it…No, he was talking about Tabula Rasa.

On another note, take this bias spin as you will, being that unless Icarus has been planning their major patches with this layoff in mind all along, future updates will indeed be affected by having a smaller team. Are these layoffs post-launch normal? Absolutely. Is this a sign that Fallen Earth is in danger? No, nowhere near it.

I mean, it’s not like Fallen Earth is so empty that you are constantly the only person within /who range, right? But that’s a topic for another day.

Funcom Layoffs: Delays Imminent


tsw_screen_1

As September draws to a close, Funcom ends the month on a bad note: The developer of the MMO Age of Conan announced today that they are laying off 20% of their workforce. The developer is looking to reduce redundancies in its ongoing focus to move the company to Montreal, where they can enjoy more tax breaks and lower wages.

Funcom’s upcoming title (pictured above), The Secret World, has been officially delayed by “several months.” The title does not yet have an announced release date, and a release date of late 2010 to early 2011 is expected. It is unknown if this will affect Age of Conan’s upcoming expansion, Rise of the Godslayer.

Also unannounced is what effect, if any, will be had on Funcom’s current titles: Age of Conan and Anarchy Online.

Vogster: Already Laying Off?


One Vogster Developer Post Termination
One Vogster Developer Post Termination

Crimecraft launched on August 25th, and today being September 17th, that would make it not even a month after the title’s release. So it comes as a bit of a surprise to learn that Vogster Entertainment, the creative minds behind the lobby based, third person shooter title, has made some cutbacks to the development team. After some cooking today, the story originally appearing as a rumor that Vogster had shut down completely, the story was clarified to reveal that only the Chicago studio closed, with significant cuts elsewhere.

“We regret the necessary staffing changes and the talented employees that this impacts, but it is an unavoidable step in moving to the operational stage of CrimeCraft and optimizing for the development of yet to be announced titles.”

Now is a good time to point out that, although layoffs are never a good sign for a company, such a move for a small company isn’t exactly uncommon. If history is any sign of the future, the layoffs involve primarily a group who were hired temporarily, for the purpose of being the development team, rather than part of the launch team who will go on to maintain the game post-launch.

That being said, players of Crimecraft wouldn’t have much to worry about, even in a worst case scenario. MMOs succeed, and MMOs barely scrape by, but they rarely shut down until they are no longer profitable. Crimecraft, with its instance format, is on the lower end of the spectrum of upkeep, aside from content development, when compared to the upkeep that, for example, Eve Online’s one shard requires to keep running. As many cutbacks that Vogster might do in the future, it is likely that Crimecraft will be profitable for a long time to come.