Palia developers lay off a third of staff just weeks after cosy life sim's Steam launch
Palia developers lay off a third of staff just weeks after cosy life sim's Steam launch
Cosy life sim Palia has laid off a third of its development staff, thought to be around 49 people, following its launch on Steam.
Thats pretty typical for studios after a launch. They release the game and scale back on staff till they have another game to cook up. Theres usually not much to do after a game release for a lot of the staff till they have a game in the pipeline again.
Typical doesn’t mean it’s not fucked up.
So leadership doesn’t prep for a new project towards the end of the current one? sounds like terrible project management is to blame.
Imo it's only recently that it's become 'typical' for this to happen.
Video game developer here. It has been happening since the games industry started. Frequently, early games were made by contractors that were let go at the end of a project.
Many studios have done this for decades. Many developers actually like this as contract work pays differently than salary work and gives different freedoms.
It’s been typical for qa and similar staff for a very long time. This article doesn’t specify what roles were cut so it’s hard to say if this is business as usual or not.