Team17 Hit With Layoffs

Highlights

  • Team17, a prominent indie game publisher, has announced layoffs, particularly in its QA team, as part of a restructuring amidst financial struggles.
  • This is the second round of layoffs for Team17 in 2023, following the earlier reduction in its art and design departments.
  • Many other gaming companies, including Epic Games and CD Projekt, have also laid off employees this year, indicating potential economic challenges in the gaming industry.

The publisher Team17 recently announced layoffs of several employees, especially in its QA team. Team17 is one of the most important Indie publishers in the gaming industry. Not only did the company create the popular Worms franchise, but also published popular games like Dredge, Blasphemous 2, and Overcooked.

This is not the first time that the publisher has decided to diminish the size of its team in 2023. Back in March, Team17 laid off employees, which greatly impacted its art and design teams. At the time, this signaled a change in Team17’s goals, as the company decided to focus more on publishing games instead of developing them. However, it seems that Team17’s financial situation has not improved in the last few months.

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Now, Team17 has revealed that it’s currently restructuring its business and that both its current CEO, Michael Pattison, and the majority of its Quality Assurance (QA) team will be let go. The company’s CEO started to work in Team17 back in 2021 and has “amicably parted ways” with the publisher, according to the official announcement. The most relevant changes in the company will happen to the QA department, however, as several junior QA analyst roles will be extinguished. In the future, Team17 will outsource some of its QA work, as a way to save costs. Team17 also revealed that it has started a “consulting” process ahead of these changes, which will be finalized by November. At the moment, there’s no exact number of how many people will lose their jobs, though.

Blasphemous Poster

This news comes on the heels of major layoffs in Epic Games. Last week, Epic announced that 870 employees would be fired from the team, which is around 16% of its entire workforce. At the time, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney described this move as the only way to stabilize the company’s finances, as Epic has been spending too much money and not earning enough funds recently.

Over the course of 2023, many gaming companies laid off employees, including Unity, Electronic Arts, Take-Two Interactive, Riot Games, Meta, BioWare, and others, and in several cases, these were significant reductions in their workforce. For example, CD Projekt cut its employee numbers by 9% back in June, firing around 100 people, which was done because the studio was “overstaffed,” according to its CEO Adam Kicinski. As 2023 is coming to its end, and some financial analysts believe that the global economy may not be improving anytime soon, it’s not an exaggeration to expect that more gaming companies may lay off employees soon.

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Source: Eurogamer

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