July 22: In a statement to PC Gamer, The Chinese Room revealed that last month's layoffs at the company and the ones reported by Game Developer were one and the same. In the initial version of this article, we reported them as two, separate instances of layoffs at the company.
As reported by Game Developer, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 developer The Chinese Room has bought its own independence from former owner Sumo Digital, but laid off an undisclosed number of employees in the process, bringing its total headcount to 55.
The management buyout was done with the help of venture capital funding, and comes after Sumo Digital announced a shift away from developing its own games to co-development, or assisting other studios on their projects. TCR studio head Ed Daly, who has been with the developer since 2018, said that the newly independent Chinese Room will remain focused on its own games.
Given Sumo's pivot, a split with the publisher to ensure the studio's future makes sense. The Chinese Room has specialized in unique first-person games that deemphasize combat in favor of exploration, like Dear Esther and Still Wakes the Deep, the latter of which news writer Elie Gould awarded an 86% in their review. Pivoting a specialized studio like this to co-development feels like buying a sports car just to go back and forth from the grocery store.
But the fact that TCR's deal with VC firm Hiro Capital required layoffs—the ones we reported on last month, according to The Chinese Room—lends a sour note to the news. "Following the divestment process a number of roles were regrettably made redundant," The Chinese Room told Game Developer. "The specifics are confidential but the studio is currently 55 developers. This was a very difficult process as we sought a future for the studio outside of Sumo. No more layoffs are planned as the studio moves forward."
Charitably, this could be explained as unavoidable triage to guarantee the studio's continued existence, but we don't know any specifics, and the entire games industry is in the middle of its third year in a row of such "triage." The Chinese Room is still set to release the long-awaited Bloodlines 2 in October, and word from PCG online editor Fraser Brown is that his first hands-on preview exceeded all of his expectations.
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