2 months after being acquired by private equity, Splash Damage is making major layoffs so it can 'remain agile,' even though it hasn't released a game since 2020

Two months ago, storied shooter studio Splash Damage parted ways with Tencent and ended up in the hands of private equity investors. I said at the time that it probably wasn't a good development, and I wish I'd been wrong but I was right: The studio said today that it is "entering a studio-wide consultation process affecting all roles."

"This was a difficult step for us to take, but we believe it is necessary so Splash Damage can remain agile and adaptable in what has been a very challenging market," the studio wrote on LinkedIn (via Game Developer).

"We know that this kind of change is emotionally tough, and we will do what we can to guide our people through this process with honesty and care. We're committed to exploring every option to retain talent and making sure those affected have meaningful support throughout."

The "consultation process" is a requirement of UK law (Splash Damage is a UK-based studio) that takes place prior to layoffs: It grants employees the right to know why they're being laid off, and to explore other possible alternatives. I don't know how often such alternatives are found (not very, I suspect) but the process at least grants people facing unemployment a little more runway than they might otherwise have.

The videogame industry is undeniably in a very bad state (and has been for the past few years, really) and the word agility (or some derivative) is often used by corporations seeking justification for putting dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of people out of work.

Even so, that feels like a particularly long stretch in the case of Splash Damage. The studio established a reputation as multiplayer specialists in the early 2000s with the Enemy Territory games and the multiplayer components of Return to Castle Wolfenstein (which was excellent) and Doom 3, and while it didn't have much luck with solo efforts Brink and Dirty Bomb, the team went back to its multiplayer roots for contributions on Gears of War: Ultimate Edition, Gears of War 4, Gears 5, Gears Tactics, and Halo: The Master Chief Collection.

But Splash Damage hasn't released a game since 2020's Outcasters, a Stadia-exclusive party shooter that was left to die along with Stadia, and the years since then have been rough. The studio unveiled its next big thing, a four-player action game called Transformers Reactivate, at The Game Awards 2022, but after more than two years of silence the game was cancelled in January, which also resulted in layoffs. In 2023, it announced a partnership with streamers Mike "Shroud" Grzesiek and Chris "Sacriel" Ball to develop an open-world survival game called Project Astrid, but nothing's been said about it since and the game's current status is unknown.