Activision has confirmed today that one of the two remaining development teams at its wholly-owned subsidiary Raven Software has been laid off. In August 2009, another development team at Raven Software was already let go. With the current workforce reduction, only a single team of developers remains at the studio. Several unnamed sources have told Kotaku, that this remaining team focus its attention on developing downloadable content. Explaining the move, Activision stated that “with the recent completion of Singularity, Raven Software is realigning its workforce to better reflect the studio’s upcoming slate.”
Raven Software was founded in 1990 by Brain and Steve Raffel, who still remain with the studio. In 1997, the studio was acquired by Activsion. Games developed by Raven Software include Shadowcaster, the Heretic and Hexen series, the original two installments in the Soldier of Fortune franchise, Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force, and two installments in the Star Wars: Jedi Knight series. This generation, the studio developed Quake 4, Wolfenstein, and Singularity, as well as multiple X-Men related games.
This sucks. JK2 was an absolutely amazing game. Then again, there were probably only a handful of people left that worked on that game still at the company. Still, lay offs aren’t fun to see.
This really sucks to see. JK2 was a great game. And Singularity was ridiculously underrated.
It was WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY better than Bioshock 2.