Bossa Studios lays off one third of its staff

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40 employees remain, focused on upcoming game Lost Skies

UK developer Bossa Studios has laid off around one third of its staff, GamesIndustry.biz has learned.

Sources shared a list of 19 people that were affected by the redundancies, mostly in QA and production roles as well as non-UK employees.

Bossa Studios has confirmed to GamesIndustry.biz that it did dismiss a number of staff at the end of 2023, and that 40 people remain in the studio.

In a statement, co-founder Henrique Olifiers told us the layoffs were due to a “perfect storm of events,” including the number of AAA games launching after September that took away the focus from AA and indie games, increasing operational costs, and delayed funding decisions across the industry for new titles.

He said the above factors and more created a “difficult situation we, as developers, are struggling to brave.”

“Resulting from this blue moon situation, we had to make the difficult decision to reshape the studio to reflect the position we find ourselves in at the end of this year, focusing all our efforts now on Lost Skies. This means we find ourselves in the heartbreaking position of having to let roughly one third of the studio go – amongst them, some of our closest colleagues.

“While we are doing our utmost to support them, we would appreciate any help our industry peers can give in spreading the word about these great people – or even better, hiring them as part of your team. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a better game development professional than one of these Bossians, whom we’ll vouch for without hesitation.

“We often say that making games is hard, but nothing is harder than seeing people you admire being let go. Ultimately, we tried our very best to avoid being in this position, and we’re truly sorry for where we have landed.”

2023 was an incredibly tough year for the games industry when it comes to layoffs, with some estimates suggesting more than 10,000 people around the world lost their jobs in the past year.

In our annual predictions feature, analysts have warned that more redundancies are to be expected in 2024.

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