A season of large-scale downsizing in the video game industry is set to continue as Team17, the developer of the Worms and Overcooked franchises, as well as the Publisher of indie hits Dredge and Blasphemous, will also be laying off employees. This comes on the heels of last week, which saw major publishers like Sega, Ubisoft, Blizzard, and Epic Games all doing the same.
Similarly to those other cases, the loss of jobs is being blamed on a “Company Restructure” and will eliminate 50 positions from the company. The majority of these positions will be from the Publisher’s QA department. Eurogamer, who initially broke this story, also stated that news of these layoffs was told to employees earlier today during an emergency town hall meeting within the company.
Different than the cases last week, the CEO of Team17, Micheal Pattison, will also be stepping down from the company. This news is according to a statement received by VG247. This is a change of pace from the layoffs of the past years, where high-ranking decision-makers faced very little backlash for decisions that led to restructuring.
Their statement to VG247 read:
In response to the reports concerning the departure of Michael Pattison from Team17, we can confirm we have amicably parted ways with Michael. We can also confirm that we have sadly entered into a period of consultation today within Team17 Digital, with Astragon and Storytoys remaining unaffected by the restructuring plans.
Epic Games, developer of Fortnite, will be eliminating 16% of their total workforce, or 830 jobs. Sega, as part of their own restructuring, canceled their upcoming 4v4 live service title Hyenas which has led to layoffs at the games developer Creative Assembly.
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