Gaming Industry240 jobs gone and Relic sold off as Sega reckons with the hangover of ‘the favorable winds of the early Covid-19 period’When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
Gaming Industry240 jobs gone and Relic sold off as Sega reckons with the hangover of ‘the favorable winds of the early Covid-19 period’When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Creative Assembly)
The videogame industry’s unendinganni horribilescontinued today as Sega announced it would be laying off 240 staff across Sega Europe, mobile developer Sega HARDlight, and Total War studio Creative Assembly. To top it off, the corporation has also sold Company of Heroes developer Relic Entertainment, which will transition to being an independently-run studio with the aid of “an external investor” in the years to come.
In a statement on Twitter, Relic told fans that its shift to being an independent studio was a “huge change” for the company, but that it wouldn’t affect ongoing support for Company of Heroes 3 or its upcoming 1.6 update this April.
Important Update from Relic Entertainment pic.twitter.com/nCcF8olDaCMarch 28, 2024
Important Update from Relic Entertainment pic.twitter.com/nCcF8olDaCMarch 28, 2024
Though grim, the layoffs aren’t entirely unexpected. In September last year, Sega announced that it would be making “structural reforms” at its European studios afterabruptly scrapping Hyenas, Creative Assembly’s doomed live-service shooter. The company made another series of cuts around that time.
But it wasn’t done, asSega has now released a statementannouncing this latest round of layoffs, and which refers directly to its September promise of “structural reforms”. Sega says that it is responding to “reactionary decline from the stay-at-home demand in Covid-19 and the economic downturn due to inflation, etc,” as well as a general downward trend in profitability.
Back in November, Sega gave a presentation to investors in which it claimed that its live-service push with Creative Assembly was due to being drunk on “the favorable winds of the early Covid-19 period.”
Back in November, Sega gave a presentation to investors in which it claimed that its live-service push with Creative Assembly was due to being drunk on “the favorable winds of the early Covid-19 period.”
Like lots of games companies, Sega—or more accurately, Sega’s staff, who probably had very little say in the matter back during lockdown—is now reaping the whirlwind of executive decisions which were made as if that early-Covid consumer jolt was going to last forever. It’s a grim, risible, and depressingly common spectacle at this point: In February, we put together a chart showingthe impact of 16,000 layoffsacross the games industry. That chart is now outdated: The cuts have only continued since then.
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The problem is so bad, and so omnipresent, that laying into executive greed became a recurring theme at this year’s just concluded GDC, with figures likeLarian’s Swen VinckeandDwarf Fortress’ Tarn Adamscriticising the short-term thinking and avarice that has underpinned so many layoffs in the last couple of years.
Yesterday,workers at Sega of America announcedthey had ratified the first union contract at a major games company. I would dearly like to write more things like that and less things like this as time goes on.
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