Team17 reportedly planning to lay off a third of the company
by Danny Craig
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Team17
After confirming plans to restructure last week, Worms developer Team17 is said to be laying off 91 employees across multiple departments.
The details:
- As reported by Eurogamer, the studio is terminating around a third of its workforce across QA, marketing, customer service, IT, HR, and usability departments. This comes just a week after Team17 announced that it was going through a consultation period and would be laying off a large number of people in its QA department as it looked to outsource its work.
- Developers working on games set to be published by Team17 have contacted Eurogamer, concerned about the future of their projects in light of the redundancies. It has also been claimed that development partners were not informed of the decision until it became public, with one developer learning that the team with whom he was working would no longer be at the company through a LinkedIn post seeking new work.
- Team17 has yet to explain the layoffs, which came as a surprise given the company's strong mid-year financial results. Staff at the studio claim they were told the cuts were necessary due to the "release calendar this year being particularly competitive for the business.”
More gaming news:
- Call of Duty players have already encountered cheaters during the Modern Warfare III beta, which was available exclusively on PlayStation. Cheaters were thought to be using PS4 dev kits, as there is currently no public jailbreak firmware that allows players to connect to the PlayStation Network.
- Sony has revealed the new PlayStation 5, which reduces the console's size by 30% and allows players to add or remove a disc drive at any time. The new system is set to replace the original console from 2020, with a slight price increase in the US and Japan.
