It's another miserable day for the videogame industry, as the past 24 hours have seen hundreds of people put out of work at Ubisoft, Torn Banner, and Sweet Bandits.
In terms of raw numbers, the Ubisoft layoffs are the deepest cuts. The decision to end development of the free-to-play shooter XDefiant, coming less than three months after executive producer Mark Rubin insisted «the game is absolutely not dying,» means the closure of Ubisoft's San Francisco and Osaka studios (although Ubisoft's San Francisco business office remains open), and a «ramp down» of the company's studio in Sydney.
A total of 277 people are expected to lose their jobs: 143 from the San Francisco studio, and another 134 «likely to depart» from Osaka and Sydney.
Sweet Bandits, the developer of vintage spycraft extraction shooter Deceive Inc, has closed outright. «There is no easy way to say this: The Sweet Bandits team is no more,» the studio announced in a message on the Deceive Inc forums. «After a long and difficult road of trying to get Deceive inc.
in a state where it could thrive, we have reached the breaking point for the studio, unable to continue this adventure with you.» Sweet Bandits said it is «considering options» for the future of the game, which will be handled by publisher Tripwire Interactive, and for now the servers will continue uninterrupted.