25 jobs cut at Starbreeze following Syndicate completion

Fri 17 Feb 2012 3:26pm GMT / 10:26am EST / 7:26am PST
Business Development

Developer reduces headcount, board member steps down

Starbreeze

Starbreeze Studios was founded in 1998 in northern Sweden. In 2000 the company merged with O3 games and...

starbreeze.com

Starbreeze Studios

Swedish developer Starbreeze is cutting 25 jobs following the completion of Syndicate for publisher Electronic Arts.

Board member Peter Tornquist will resign from Starbreeze's board with no replacement planned.

"It is sad that we are forced to make staff cutbacks affecting employees. But we have to reduce staff after the final delivery of the Syndicate," offered Mikael Nermark, CEO of Starbreeze.

The Syndicate remake is released next week and has been in development for a number of years under the codename Project RedLime.

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15 Comments

Fran Mulhern

Recruit3D

Good luck to those affected.

Posted:A year ago

Stefan Pettersson
Specialist Consultant

Fat Tuna

Looking forward to Syndicate next week. I truly loved both Riddick games and The Darkness. Makes me sad though to see people rewarded for completing their work by getting fired. Good luck to all of you!

Posted:A year ago

Kingman Cheng
Illustrator and Animator

Good luck guys. :

Posted:A year ago

jim ellis

Seriously - what is happening to this industry now... :-( so sorry for people affected.

Posted:A year ago

Dave Herod
Senior Programmer

Codemasters

I just hope that if they have any bonus schemes, those made redundant would still get what was owed to them.

Posted:A year ago

Frederic Eichinger
Web Developer

And again we see EA involved ... Not that EA have anything to do with this, but seriously, if the funding doesn't suffice for the studio to get a new project up with the full staff, something is quite wrong.
Good luck, guys.

Posted:A year ago

Greg Knight
Freelance Programmer

Might have been contractors. Certainly know they were talking to some.

Posted:A year ago

Patrick Frost
QA Project Monitor

No it won't be contractors. If they were then Starbreeze would have no obligation to mention it really. There are plenty of people working in the industry on "0 Hour" contracts who get fired about 100 at a time, usually in February but because of the nature of the agreement, they are technically not fired, just taken down to 0 hours per week.

I'd actually be interested to know how wide spread that occurrence is.

Posted:A year ago

Mikael Bruun-Hansen
student

To me this is definitely not a surprise. Starbreeze needed a deal on a new AAA project, and it was really the battle of getting an agreement with a large publisher vs. layoffs. Todays message is very bad news for starbreeze, I really hope Project P13 become a succes...

Posted:A year ago

Jonah Falcon
Writer

Er, don't most developers cut contractors after a big project is finished?

Posted:A year ago

#10

Patrick Frost
QA Project Monitor

@Jonah, as I've mentioned these are very unlikely to be contractor staff as they would not be classified as cuts.

Posted:A year ago

#11

Matt Martin
Editor

GamesIndustry International

As Patrick says, this isn't contractors. Starbreeze is obliged to inform investors of these layoffs (it is a listed company in Sweden).

Posted:A year ago

#12

Alfonso Sexto
LT Tester (Spanish)

Keyfactor

This is usual industry procedures after completing a game. Not that is nice in anyway< but they are there.

Good luck to those affected, may you find another good place in the near future :)

Posted:A year ago

#13

Kevin Clark-Patterson
Lecturer in Games Development

Lancaster and Morecambe College

@ Stefan Dont be expecting too much!

Looks like they chose the right time, after the project was finished and without a new project to continue on with to fund the staff. Surely contracted work is a more viable way forward for the industry, improved competition and less talk of redundancies once a projected is completed.

Posted:A year ago

#14

Michael Vandendriessche

That's a big bummer to everyone affected.
i guess Starbreeze did what they needed to do but layoffs are never fun to read about.
Good luck!

Posted:A year ago

#15