Jagex, the studio best known for long-running MMORPG RuneScape, has announced a round of layoffs in order to “reduce complexity” and “increase agility”, which sounds like fairly typical corpo-speak to me.
In a statement given to PC Gamer, Jagex said the layoffs were “part of [its] strategy to build the best experiences for players and grow the RuneScape community”, and that the layoffs would “ensure [the studio is] fully focused on the areas that matter most”, i.e. “[its] games, [its] players, and [its] future”.
According to the Jagex spokesperson who gave the statement, the “vast majority” of layoffs will be “within non-game development and non-player-facing functions, such as operations and administrative support”. The goal, Jagex says, is to “protect and strengthen the teams directly responsible for delivering value to players”.
Jagex doesn’t disclose how many staff members have been laid off, but it does reiterate to PC Gamer that the layoffs are not mostly in the areas of “frontline development or player-facing teams”.
Unfortunately, Jagex is far from the only studio to be affected by layoffs in recent months. Within the last week or two alone, we’ve seen layoffs at Yooka-Laylee studio Playtonic, Gears of War: E-Day co-developer People Can Fly, and tech giant Microsoft.
They join a long list of other studios to let staff go this year, including EA subsidiary Respawn, British publisher Sumo, and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League developer Rocksteady, and that’s by no means an exhaustive list.
That’s not to mention the studios outright being shut down, like Torchlight 3‘s Echtra Games or Condemned and Middle-earth: Shadow of War developer Monolith. Truly, it’s a harrowing time to be an employee in the games industry.
Still, Jagex hasn’t reached that point yet, and with a brand new game in the RuneScape series having only been released back in April, it’s unlikely the studio is about to close down any time soon. Watch this space for more info.
