It’s by no means enjoyable to report on a game launching initially of the week and the developer making main workers cuts earlier than the weekend, as is the case with Dreadnought developer Six Foot. As reported by Game Informer and confirmed by Six Foot’s Chief Operating Officer, the Dreadnought studio (working in collaboration with Spec Ops: The Line outfit Yager) has let go “about a third” of its workforce. According to Game Informer’s sources, the game has struggled to herald the cash required to maintain everybody on the studio paid.
It has been a tough few months within the games business, and particularly unhealthy for free-to-play games. Splash Damage introduced that Dirty Bomb had seen its last update simply weeks after leaving early entry, and Wildstar studio Carbine shut their doors final month. According to one in all Game Informer’s sources, there’s a skeleton crew sustaining Dreadnought nonetheless, however the firm’s present state reminds them of “the Telltale situation”, referring to last month’s catastrophic adventure studio shutdown.
In the case of Dreadnought, it seems like a mixture of growth troubles and missed deadlines led to those cuts. The game was on account of depart beta on PC in mid-summer, however between delays, area of interest curiosity and restricted advertising and marketing, its launch final Sunday was a quiet and largely uncelebrated occasion. In the tip, it simply wasn’t pulling in sufficient cash, and I’ve heard studies that the enterprise mannequin is geared in the direction of giving paying gamers a bonus at larger tiers, though I’ve loved the game at decrease tiers.
Fortunately, the layoffs appear to have been dealt with comparatively effectively by Six Foot. The 45 workers to be let go had been provided the selection of taking unpaid depart till the game discovered its footing, or leaving the corporate in good standing with the prospect of being re-hired later. Not an excellent scenario by any means, however the cuts had been anticipated, and it’s undoubtedly higher than shocked and outraged workers pouring onto Twitter to announce the demise of a studio.
I sincerely hope that Six Foot can discover a solution to maintain the game operating and their folks paid. The PC model is effectively populated for a distinct segment area fight game (in keeping with Steam Charts) and hopefully will probably be for a while. It can be doubly tragic to see one other studio and their game misplaced altogether.
Dreadnought is out now, free-to-play, and here on Steam.
