Daybreak Games has laid off multiple employees, including some that were working on battle royale Planetside Arena (opens in new tab), which went into Early Access last month. The scale of the layoffs at the H1Z1 and Planetside 2 studio is not yet clear, but one developer who lost his job said (opens in new tab) multiple teams had been hit, while Planetside Arena's lead designer said (opens in new tab) his team had "lost some really good people today".
In a statement to Gamasutra (opens in new tab), Daybreak Games confirmed it had laid off "some employees" as part of a restructuring. "We are taking steps to improve our business and to support our long-term vision for the existing franchises and development of new games," it said. "This will include a realignment of the company into separate franchise teams, which will allow us to highlight their expertise, better showcase the games they work on, and ultimately provide tailored experiences for our players. Unfortunately, some employees were impacted by this effort, and we’re doing what we can to support them during this challenging time."
Daybreak laid off a significant number of employees last year, both in April (opens in new tab) and December (opens in new tab).
Several developers (opens in new tab) who lost their job yesterday took to Twitter (opens in new tab) to announce the news. Former H1Z1 technical director Josh Kriegshauser, who worked on Planetside Arena before handing in his notice last month, said that (opens in new tab) "lots of friends were affected" by the layoffs.
I have reached out to Daybreak to clarify the scale of the job cuts.
