GameCyte has learned that after accumulating $100 million in venture capital, the Redwood Shores branch of MMO developer Trion World Network laid off as many as twenty individuals last week. And though many of the affected seem to be rank-and-file from the company's web publishing arm, we have reason to believe that personnel at all [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Joystiq is reporting that EA's continued "restructuring" has resulted in the laying off of "21 customer service employees, half of QA and all of the playtest group" at EA subsidiary Mythic Entertainment, developer of the popular MMO Warhammer Online. However, according to Videogamer.com, Joystiq's report flies in the face of statements made by Mythic Entertainment co-founder [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Given the hectic nature of CES 2009, we weren't able to give you the whole story about Sega's new mobile games initiative two weeks ago. We could only that if Sega gets what they're after, you can expect what amounts to a Virtual Console filled with emulated Sega Genesis games on your iPhone, Android, Windows [...]
Continue reading...Thursday, January 15, 2009
Despite reporting an 18% increase in overall annual sales in October 2008, the NPD has recently acknowledged the that recession is, in fact, taking a toll on the U.S. video games industry. Yesterday, during a lunch session at the Game Business Law Summit, NPD senior account manager Michael Klotz addressed the growing presentiment that the [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, January 6, 2009
1UP was officially purchased by Hearst only a short while ago, and already ramifications are being felt among its core staff. Remember how Ziff Davis CEO Jason Young said that “many” employees would become part of the new UGO/1UP team? Turns out I was (unfortunately) right; that was just polite corporate talk, as—so far—more than [...]
Continue reading...Thursday, December 18, 2008
Factor 5 cuts its staff in half, Midway, Turbine, Sony, and EA all cut personnel throughout Q4…and now, Free Radical is almost assuredly no more. In an age of a struggling worldwide economy, publishers and investors are less willing than ever to take a chance on a company with any past blotches. Free Radical, one of [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, December 16, 2008
While it’s very likely that Factor 5 is cutting staff, I’m sure plenty of people out there are still looking for some more evidence to support the rumors. The latest, surprisingly, comes from the LinkedIn profiles of some recent former employees. As of now, there are at least eight profiles on LinkedIn (that I can view) [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Nintendo may be sitting pretty on top of the fat stacks of cash it made from selling 800,000 Wiis this Thanksgiving week, but out in the greater business world it's not all fun and games. Today, Sony Corporation announced that it has "embarked on a series of measures to strengthen its corporate structure and bolster [...]
Continue reading...Friday, November 21, 2008
After only one year on the market, Tabula Rasa, the science fiction MMORPG from developer NCsoft, has announced it will be shutting down its service on February 28, 2009. According to a statement made on the Tabula Rasa news page by the TR development team, the game's poor performance is the primary reason for the [...]
Continue reading...Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Why did five THQ development studios vanish into thin air this weekend? Probably because the company posted a Q2 loss today of $115 million, over sixteen times that of last year. (For comparison purposes, THQ's tripled their losses this July to only $27 million.) As a result, the publisher has decided to do a little necessary "streamlining." [...]
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Wednesday, January 21, 2009
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