Surgeon Simulator developer Bossa Studios has laid off a third of its staff.
As reported by our sister site, GamesIndustry.biz, it’s thought 19 people were affected by the redundancies, “mostly in QA and production roles, as well as non-UK employees”.
According to Bossa, the studio continues to employ 40 staff.
Bossa co-founder Henrique Olifiers blamed a “perfect storm of events” for the layoffs, and reportedly said that due to increasing operational costs, funding delays, and the number of AAA games released towards of the end of the year shifting focus away from smaller, independent games, Bossa encountered a “difficult situation” that it was “struggling to brave”.
“Resulting from this blue moon situation, we had to make the difficult decision to reshape the studio to reflect the position we find ourselves in at the end of this year, focusing all our efforts now on Lost Skies,” Olifiers said. “This means we find ourselves in the heartbreaking position of having to let roughly one third of the studio go – amongst them, some of our closest colleagues.
“While we are doing our utmost to support them, we would appreciate any help our industry peers can give in spreading the word about these great people – or even better, hiring them as part of your team. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a better game development professional than one of these Bossians, whom we’ll vouch for without hesitation.
“We often say that making games is hard, but nothing is harder than seeing people you admire being let go,” Olifiers added. “Ultimately, we tried our very best to avoid being in this position, and we’re truly sorry for where we have landed.”
“How is it that 2023 can have been one of the best years in memory for games but also one of the worst years in memory for games, and for the gaming industry,” Bertie wrote in his excellent write-up, You can’t talk about 2023 in games without talking about layoffs. “I can’t balance this equation – I’ve been trying all year and it gives me a headache.
“We should be talking about 2023 as one of the years that will go down in history for games, like 2007 did. We’ve had Baldur’s Gate 3, Zelda 2, Cocoon, Alan Wake 2, Banished Vault, and – genuinely – so many more. We’ve been giddy all year at Eurogamer at the relentless quality on show. We ought to be celebrating now during this end of year period, and we will celebrate. We can’t do that alone, because there’s another story we cannot ignore: layoffs.”