ImaginEngine closes, 25 lose jobs
Apples To Apples studio shuts down
Around 25 developers are believed to have lost their jobs in the recent closure of the ImaginEngine development studio.
GamesBeat reported that studio head Randall Sanborn was among the 25, though was unable to get confirmation from owner Foundation 9 Entertainment.
ImaginEngine's history includes both work for hire projects and original titles, including Apples To Apples, Care Bears: Let's Have A Ball and Monster High: Ghoul Spirit.
Foundation 9 Entertainment is a conglomerate of studios that includes Sumo Digital, Pipeworks, Double Helix games and Backbone, which saw heavy layoffs last week.
We are at the beginning of an era of high instability in the game development industry during which very many studios will close and many more will spring up to replace them. There are two factors here:
1) There just is not enough money being earned by the sale of console games to pay the wages of all the people making these games. A contracting market at retail means a contracting market for jobs in development.
2) The huge number of startups relying on digital distribution will not all succeed, whether through "luck" or not having the required skill set. There will be plenty of attrition and a high turnover of companies till the industry here stabilises.
It is terrible every time for the people losing their jobs. Also there is a huge need to reskill, for instance from C++ to Unity. But the industry is more dynamic than ever before with startup capital easier to acquire and an immense growth in the number of people actually playing games on a regular basis. We should be rejoicing that our industry is so vibrant.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Bruce Everiss on 16th October 2012 7:40am
Posted:7 months ago