British video game maker Bossa Studios has parted ways with about a third of its staff according to multiple sources. One of the sources shared a list of 19 former employees impacted by the layoff. The majority of those affected are believed to be non-UK employees and those in the QA and production departments.
The news about layoffs at Bossa Studios first appeared as rumors but was later confirmed by the company’s co-founder Henrique Olifiers. According to Olifiers, the layoffs were due to a “perfect storm of events” including the deluge of triple-A games that launched after September and how they took the shine off AA and indie games.
Other factors blamed for the layoffs include rising operational costs and industry-wide delayed funding decisions for new titles. Olifiers confirmed to GamesIndustry.biz that the aforementioned factors put the company in a difficult position.
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“Resulting from this blue moon situation, we had to make the difficult decision to reshape the studio to reflect the position we find ourselves in at the end of this year, focusing all our efforts now on Lost Skies,” Olifiers said. “This means we find ourselves in the heartbreaking position of having to let roughly one-third of the studio go—amongst them, some of our closest colleagues.”
Just like we have seen with several other layoffs, the management of Bossa Studios promised to assist the affected staff in finding new roles. “You’ll be hard-pressed to find a better game development professional than one of these Bossians, whom we’ll vouch for without hesitation,” Olifiers said.
“We often say that making games is hard, but nothing is harder than seeing people you admire being let go. Ultimately, we tried our very best to avoid being in this position, and we’re truly sorry for where we have landed.”
The layoffs at Bossa Studios will likely not affect Lost Skies
From the comments made by Olifiers, it appears the layoffs will not affect the development of Lost Skies. Bossa Studios is currently developing the game in collaboration with Humble Games. No timeline has been given for the release of the game. However, Bossa Studios has shared artwork and pre-alpha footage from the game.
The most recent pre-alpha footage shared by the studios was a timelapse of the day/night cycle. In the footage, the studio showed how much it has evolved since they first shared. The forest scene timelapse showed the sun moving across the sky and the environment reacting accordingly.
In late November last year, Bossa Studios announced they were searching for playtesters for Lost Skies. The announcement came with a 66-second video clip teasing the game’s main story which has something to do with fighting off giant scorpions and grappling with a retractable hook.
Since its founding in 2010, Bossa Studios has been involved in phenomenal projects including I am Bread, I am Fish, and the Surgeon Simulator series. Several popular YouTube content creators have helped to boost the popularity of Bossa Studios’ games.
Bossa Studios has now joined Archiact as the two studios that have laid off employees this year. Last year was one of the toughest for video game workers. It is estimated that over 10,000 roles were made redundant across several studios last year.
With the increasing adoption of AI by video game makers—evident in Square Enix’s New Year message—more redundancies are likely expected this year. Many have predicted that the increasing redundancies in the video game industry will likely lead to an explosion of indie games. However, we highlighted 5 reasons why that may not happen.
