Activision Lays Off 40 Employees at High Moon Studios - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 03 April 2013 / 3,306 Views
Activision has told Kotaku that it has laid off 40 employees at its High Moon Studios. The studio had previously developed Transformers: Fall of Cybertron. The layoffs have occured at the team currently developing the Deadpool video game.
"Activision Publishing consistently works to align its costs with its revenues – this is an ongoing process," said the company in a statement to Kotaku. "With the completion of development on Deadpool, we are taking a reduction in staff at High Moon Studios to better align our development talent against our slate. Approximately, 40 full-time employees will be impacted globally. We are offering those employees who are impacted outplacement counseling services."
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This is a consequence of over-staffing projects just to make software more quickly. Once you cross a certain threshold you have a lot more bench space than you have need and unless you can start the next project and in swing way before your bench will be full... you end up having these type of layoffs. They also do surge of hiring when they get out of prototyping etc on the next project. It is business as usual for the big publishers because not doing so costs too much money.
The fact that that this seems to be happening more frequently and some publishers/developers think this is business as usual makes me ashamed to be a gamer.
the game is not even out, and they are already doing this?
They are done with the core work, and don't feel they need to folk. The videogames industry treats workers as replaceable cogs. Viva la free markets I guess.
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