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Layoffs At Crystal Dynamics, Tomb Raider Team Unaffected
Square Enix has confirmed that a team working on a new IP at Crystal Dynamics has been laid off. This news comes just a week after the publisher announced a ¥1.6 billion extraordinary loss due to project re-evaluation.
"We've made some decisions at Crystal Dynamics this week around the second project we're working on, which has resulted in a small number of roles (roughly 12) becoming redundant as we re-scope the project," a representative told Game Informer.
"This doesn't affect the Tomb Raider development team, who, as confirmed last week, are well into production on a next-generation sequel. We're a close-knit team at Crystal and wouldn't be making these changes if we didn't feel it was absolutely necessary. We'll help those affected as best we can and we want to thank them for their hard work and commitment. If anyone is looking for development talent, please contact: mtrout@crystald.com and we'll put you in touch direct."
Square Enix recently announced the next-gen Tomb Raider sequel after it was outed by comic writer Gail Simone. The confirmation came via a blog post from president of the Americas and Europe Phil Rogers.
[Source: Kotaku]
Our Take
Our thoughts are with those affected by the layoffs. Unfortunately, we are likely to hear more of these stories related to Square Enix's review of in-progress titles.
I expect that we're going to see a lot of similar adjustments industry-wide as publishers are forced to rein in exploding development budgets. Developers are going to be forced to do more with less, and hopefully the architecture of the new consoles makes that a much easier proposition.
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