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Nicholas Lovell
Home   >   Game Over Zone   >   Funcom and Transmission Games both announce job losses

Funcom and Transmission Games both announce job losses

By on October 1, 2009
  • Funcom, the publicly-listed developer/publisher of Age of Conan is still struggling. In an attempt to cut costs, it is slashing 20% of its workforce (60 people, mainly in its home country of Norway) and trying to shift much of the rest of it to Canada to benefit from tax breaks.
  • Australia’s Transmission Games has made 20 staff redundant following the release of Ashes Cricket.

Is the new economic reality seeing companies trim staff at the end of their projects, hoping to hire them back as contractors at the height of their next game? And if so, does that mean that the Hollywood model of freelancers is finally coming to games?

An update yesterday suggested that Transmission Games may have had 30 layoffs, not 20

(Added to the Job Loss Tracker, naturally.)

About Nicholas Lovell

As well as founding Gamesbrief, Nicholas is a consultant to the games industry on online and corporate strategy and financial matters. He can be contacted at nicholas@gamesbrief.com Following a decade long financial career in the City of London, Nicholas founded Lodestar Partners, a corporate finance boutique that focused exclusively on the games industry. From 2006 to 2008, Nicholas was CEO of GameShadow, a games website and patching engine. He is a non-executive director of developer nDreams and provides consultancy services to a number of companies including Firefly and Huddle.
  • deftangel

    I was pretty disappointed in the Ashes games to be honest. How much difference that made in light of a successful Ashes summer I don't know.

    I think staff rolling off & on projects for a single-project studio is logical with this generation's development costs and schedules. I wouldn't put it down to economic downturn per se.

  • deftangel

    I was pretty disappointed in the Ashes games to be honest. How much difference that made in light of a successful Ashes summer I don't know.

    I think staff rolling off & on projects for a single-project studio is logical with this generation's development costs and schedules. I wouldn't put it down to economic downturn per se.