Last week ended with a dire flood of layoffs in the games industry, including Sega, Ubisoft, Blizzard, and Epic games. Unfortunately, this week seems to be following the trend – Team17, developer of the Worms series, and publisher of games like Blasphemous, Dredge, and more, has announced layoffs as well, according to Eurogamer.
The job losses, which are due to a “company restructure,” will eliminate about 50 positions from the company, and the majority of those positions will be in the publisher’s QA department. Eurogamer also reports the news was delivered to employees during an emergency town hall meeting this morning.
In addition to members of the QA team, Team17 CEO Michael Pattison will also be stepping down, according to a statement received by VG247. This stands in sharp contrast to many other recent layoffs, where executives had been exempt from cost-cutting measures. You can read the full statement below.
In response to the reports concerning the departure of Michael Pattison from Team17, we can confirm we have amicably parted ways with Michael. We can also confirm that we have sadly entered into a period of consultation today within Team17 Digital, with Astragon and Storytoys remaining unaffected by the restructuring plans.
For more on the recent wave of layoffs, read about how Sega canceled several upcoming games and how Epic laid off over 800 people.
What do you think about this year’s massive amount of layoffs?