Report: Firefall Developer Red 5 Studios Hit with Layoffs - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 24 November 2015 / 3,744 Views
Firefall developer Red 5 Studios has let go of 40 employees, according to one of the affected employees who spoke with MMORPG.
"It was almost like launch never happened, because we never received any updates besides a vague feeling that the game wasn’t doing very well," said the employee. "At 3:15 on Friday (11/20), about forty of us were called into a meeting where, after some hemming and hawing about how hard a decision this was to make, we were let go with no severance, health insurance expires at the end of the month, thanks for all your overtime. The rest of the office was sent home early, I assume because they didn’t want people talking to each other, but it’s 2015 and Facebook exists, so..."
"The cuts were from basically every department and didn’t follow any kind of rhyme or reason, and they definitely weren’t performance based. Aside from myself, we lost several leads, seniors, and people who’d been with the company a really long time. In total, I’d say between 20 and 25% of the studio lost their job in the cuts."
"Honestly, they asked us to remake the game in a year, including doing full development on 22 instanced missions and an overhaul of every major system, using art assets from 2008. I don’t know what they expected to happen. Everything that’s going wrong with Firefall isn’t from a lack of talent or passion on behalf of the dev team - it’s corporate mismanagement."
Red 5 Studios has since released the following statement:
"The organization optimization was due to our strategy modification, which includes empowering the support to the operation in various global markets and the upcoming PS4 project. Doing so requires specific skill sets and experiences. Red 5 will continue its commitment to developing AAA games and bringing the best game experience to its audiences.
We appreciate your inquiry and interest in Red 5 Studios and Firefall as we take it worldwide on multiple platforms."
Firefall launched in July 2014 for Windows PC.
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A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
