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Silicon Knights Lays Off 26 After Too Human's Completion
by David Jenkins
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October 7, 2008
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Canadian developer Silicon Knights confirmed the layoffs of 26 employees following the release of its latest game, Too Human.
Responding to a story on weblog Kotaku, a statement from the company admitted, "After any big game ships, there is often some attrition."
"To that end, Silicon Knights temporarily laid-off 26 employees today [Monday] while they ramp up on other projects. All the company’s directors and leads are still at Silicon Knights and working on its next projects," continued the official statement.
Kotaku's report suggests that the majority of those laid off were newer staff brought in towards the end of development on Too Human.
The company’s only officially-confirmed new title is an unnamed collaboration with Sega, first announced in 2005. Sequels to complete the intended Too Human trilogy have also been repeatedly mentioned by the company.
As the company points out, Silicon Knights, also known for titles such as Eternal Darkness and Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, has seen considerable growth in recent years, with a current headcount of around 180 employees.
"Silicon Knights is currently working on several new and exciting games that will be announced to the public in the coming months," said president and founder Denis Dyack as part of the statement.
"In addition to those projects, Silicon Knights continues to develop and promote other new and original ideas, which will become the innovative games of tomorrow. These 26 individuals are hard-working and valued team members that we hope to bring back as we ramp up on our future projects."
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More reason why the game industry model needs an overhaul.
My fiancee works at a studio and whenever a title is over with, people (mostly contract workers) are let go because they won't be needed for a while.
Sadly this is regular in the industry and people who think it's not are pretty dumb.
The video game industry needs to unionize in order to stop game companies from doing this crap. If we don't, companies are going to start outsourcing even more than they are now and the game industry will be a mainly outsourced resource group.
Programmers will go first because let's face it, Indian programmers at 25k a year are much cheaper than American programmers at 80k a year.