Japanese Publisher Sega are cutting 240 jobs in Europe, in addition to selling off Canadian developer Relic Entertainment in order to cut costs across the business, it was announced today.
The job cuts are mainly hitting Sega studio Alien Isolation developer Creative Assembly, who had their virtually complete first person shooter project “Hyenas” cancelled at the 11th hour last year.
This is the second round for the developers, who already were hit with redundancies when the decision to cancel Hyenas was made.
Further cuts are being made across Sega Europe, and a small number at Sega HARDlight, who recently released mobile game Sonic Dream Team. Sega’s job cuts continue the trend set for the games industry in 2023 and one that has continued this year.
Relic Entertainment have escaped the cuts however, posting a statement from the developers X (formerly Twitter) account advising they will become an “indepently-run development studio” seemingly with the assistance of an external investor instead.
Updates to Company of Heroes 3 will continue they said, with the 1.6 update hitting April, “loaded with new content and features requested by our community.”
Even Xbox boss Phil Spencer weighed in on the continued layoffs across the industry, in an interview with Polygon, stating “The math on making a game has definitely changed”.
