A report by Gamebanshee.com indicates that between 20 and 30 developers at Obsidian Entertainment have been laid off following the apparent cancellation of an unannounced next-gen project. More details are available after the jump.
Though no official statement has been made by Obsidian Entertainment, recent tweets and LinkedIN updates from multiple Obsidian employees seem to confirm the news. An anonymous source confirmed to Gamebansee that it was a next-gen project currently known as Project North Carolina that was cancelled. In addition to the development staff that was working on this unannounced project, several developers working on South Park: The Game have been affected.
According to the anonymous source, the layoffs have affected all disciplines of the development teams, and include one employee that only started out at the company a day ago, as well as one that started his employment last week. The staff at the studio also suffered a round of layoffs less than a year ago.
My best to the 30.
This has been a very tough generation on non-breakout hit devs and I fear for the state of the industry in the next years. If Obsidian’s done for, the US got left devoid of any good RPG designers. Bioware and Bethesda, while good at their own thing -awkard coming-of-age girl novels and world building (not counting Oblivion), respectively-, are both pretty darned terrible at designing RPGs mechanics and stories.
Europe’s RPG developers are doing a lot better, thankfully.