Developer Don’t Nod Montreal, who recently released Lost Record: Bloom & Rage earlier this year, has reportedly laid off an undisclosed number of employees across multiple departments. This news broke via a round of departure announcements on LinkedIn, in what was referred to as a “wave of layoffs.” People affected include QA Lead Sandra Comier, Principal Cinematic Artist Mary Pouliot, and Technical Artist Laurent Dufresne, as well as Senior Game and Level Designer Mathieu Trembly.
Mary Pouliet wrote via LinkedIn:
Although I was anticipating this dreadly fatality that is now a habit in the industry, it came to me as a real shock. I did not anticipate that this morning when waking up and going to the studio. But there it is. No cinematic artist anymore at DNM.
While Laurent Dufresne wrote:
I’d like to say I’m shocked but I think the dread across the entire video games industry in the last few years has been a constant we’ve all dealt with on a daily basis, and started to feel numb to.
The omnipresent waves of layoffs in our industry finally got to us after the release of Bloom and Rage. Sadly while we managed what feels like a miracle given circumstances, it didn’t seem like enough to keep our relatively small team whole and a non-insignificant chunk of it was lost today.
In September, Don’t Nod stated that two of their releases from that year, Banishers: The Ghosts of New Eden and Jusant, both failed to achieve the commercial success the company had hoped for, stating that both were “Well below” expectations. This is a particular shame since both were good games that achieved mostly positive reviews. In particular, we gave Banishers an 8 out of 10 upon release.
The following month, CEO of Don’t Nod Oskar Guilbert released a statement making mention of a “reorganization project” with the potential of up to 69 jobs being lost in the process. The French game developer union STJV condemned the decision, calling it “the climax of a series of catastrophic decisions, denounced for a long time by workers.”
This culminated in January of this year with the union calling on the employees of Don’t Nod to launch an extended strike in support of the employees now un risk of unemployment. This strike was approved by 90 percent of the employees, who voted in a general assembly. This led to negotiations between the STJV and Don’t Nod, along with strike actions, resulting in a deal being cut between the two to widen the scope of voluntary downsizing redundancies. This was suggested could save up to 23 jobs, allowing people to accept a voluntary severance package as opposed to select employees being forced out. There has been no comment on today’s layoffs, confirming or denying if they were the result of the reorganization project or something unrelated.
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