Avalanche’s Lost Contracts Claim 77 Jobs

Just Cause developer Avalanche Studios is having to trim their staff by 77 people in the face of two lost publishing contracts over the past year, worth an estimated $US34 million. Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Avalanche CEO Christofer Sundberg explains how the layoffs came about.

“We lost the first deal in February but we could survive that one because we had a shortage of staff in other projects and we decided to put together a team to work on an original IP that we had in development. But the team that were working on a project that was terminated last week – there were about 67 people on that team.”

Undeterred by such setbacks, Sundberg goes on to state that the trimmed staff has resulted in a stronger focus on their remaining titles, Just Cause 2 for Eidos and The Hunter with Emote Games. They’re also in discussions with different publishers regarding a new project, so the layoffs certainly aren’t affecting the company’s ambition. Good for them.

Avalanche prepares to lay off 77 staff [GamesIndustry.biz]