The gaming industry will continue to cut its workforce in 2024, and this time we can report on the layoffs at a studio of NetEase and the owner of Wayfinder…
The Canadian Skybox Labs, which is part of NetEase, has laid off 25 people. This was announced on LinkedIn a few days ago, and the reasoning is the usual: despite their best efforts, they were not immune to the unexpected challenges that have affected many companies in the games industry. All affected employees will receive severance pay, career transition services, and access to other resources to help them through this difficult time, so it’s a relatively fair mentality on the part of Skybox Labs.
The studio was acquired by NetEase in early 2023, and they’ve previously worked on the Halo, Minecraft, and Age of Empires franchises. It’s unclear if they’re currently working on a game of their own, or if they’ll continue to collaborate with other studios to show up in a supporting role in the credits. But it is possible that if NetEase has resorted to layoffs just a year and a half after the acquisition, they may have similar plans for their other studios (e.g. Grasshopper Manufacture, Quantic Dream…). Last month, NetEase reported that the developers of Visions of Mana, the 2020-launched Ouka Studios, had been laid off by the Chinese company…
So Skybox Labs was only able to plan for one round of layoffs, which is better than Bungie, where they’ve been laying people off all the time. But it wasn’t just Skybox that saw layoffs: Airship Syndicate also laid off 16 people. Back in February, 12 were let go, and LinkedIn has a statement from operations director Tomas Garbar explaining the reasoning at the time: “Given the difficult challenges facing our industry, we’ve had to make the difficult decision to let go of some incredibly talented Airship team members, including 12 full-time employees and four contractors. Our team of 50 will remain committed to delivering on the Wayfinder roadmap and developing future projects.
Last November, Digital Extremes announced that it was getting rid of Wayfinder, which was then acquired by Airship Syndicate, which was founded in 2014 in Austin, Texas. However, more than 12,700 people have lost their jobs in the games industry this year alone!
Source: WCCFTech, Gamesindustry
