Hardsuit Labs laid several people off after Paradox Interactive has taken away the development from them.
Anna C. Webster, a former writer and narrative designer at Hardsuit Labs, has announced that she was laid off from the studio, „alongside the rest of the narrative department (and many others).” Nicole Stanford, another former member of this department (a narrative designer), confirmed, that „the entire narrative team including [herself] were affected.” Lead narrative designer Samantha Wallschlaeger (who was hired back in October!) was also laid off.
Going by these tweets, we can’t get a grasp on the effect of the layoffs, but thankfully, Hardsuit Labs sent a statement to Gamesindustry, which – unfortunately – still didn’t mention how many people were made redundant. „We can confirm that Hardsuit Labs recently experienced layoffs. While we worked hard to source some great work opportunities for the studio to move forward with, we were unable to provide work for a small number of individuals and thus made the difficult decision to part ways. This decision was not made lightly and was done so only after we felt we had exhausted the opportunities to avoid such a layoff.
For the affected team members, with their permission, we are reaching out to partners and fellow studios in hopes that we can assist in placing our former colleagues with new opportunities. We sincerely wish the very best to our former colleagues and thank them for their contributions to the studio and our projects during their time here. Hardsuit Labs continues to move forward with existing and new opportunities, as well as current work on several yet unannounced projects. We look forward to sharing additional information on these games when we can in the future,” the statement says.
We still don’t know who is developing Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, which might be part of „the curse of the sequel.” Just look how Dead Island 2 and Dying Light 2 are faring. We don’t know which one will launch first.
Source: Gamesindustry
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