Orcs Must Die! developer lays off 30 staff to focus on single game

Orcs Must Die! developer Robot Entertainment has laid off more than 30 staff and cut the number of games it's working on from two to one, it has announced. 

In a blog post, the company said it "grew significantly" during the development of Orcs Must Die! Unchained, the 2015 entry in the third-person tower defense series, and has since been working on two games. However, it is now "making a strategic shift" to working on a single project, which means cutting its staff numbers.

"Unfortunately, that means we need to resize our team to fit only one project. We’ve made the very difficult decision to let go of over 30 of our very talented and dedicated developers," it said earlier this week. "The coming days will be difficult as we say goodbye to friends and colleagues. We are grateful to have had the opportunity to work with them all."

Its new game will be announced "soon", it added.

Orcs Must Die! Unchained was the first in the series that was free to play, but it attracted far fewer players than its predecessor Orcs Must Die! 2 (roughly 1.1 million players compared to 1.8 million, according to SteamSpy).

Thanks, gamesindustry.biz.

Samuel Horti

Samuel Horti is a long-time freelance writer for PC Gamer based in the UK, who loves RPGs and making long lists of games he'll never have time to play.