shifting

Yooka-Laylee developers Playtonic are laying off staff across their operations, as they wrestle with what they call “a period of profound change in how games are created and financed”. It’s not clear what these “profound changes” are, exactly – soaring budgets? Evergreen service games drinking up all the oxygen? Falling interest in the genre of mascot platformer Playtonic are best known for? Either way, the outcome is that a bunch of artists, game designers, narrative designers, producers and UI or UX people are now looking for work.

“We’ve all seen in recent years how the games industry has been changing, resulting in studio after studio finding themselves in situations where to continue to exist, they must make painful decisions – decisions that impact the lives of so many individual talented developers,” reads a statement on social media. “This isn’t a reflection of anyone’s talent or dedication, the people leaving have poured so much heart, creativity, and care into everything we do.”

Playtonic brand manager Anni Valkama has shared a list of departing staff on LinkedIn. “Whether you are hiring yourself, your company is hiring or you know someone that is hiring, these are some of the best artists, designers, producers, and writer[s] you could have on your team,” she wrote.

In their social media statement, Playtonic further comment that “this isn’t simply a difficult moment” and that “the landscape is shifting, and with it, so must we.” All of which is slightly more sensitively worded than say, Microsoft’s “aligning” 1900 jobs into the sun, or Take-Two’s “rationalizing” away livelihoods by the fistful, but doesn’t answer many questions.

Playtonic were founded in 2014 by former members of Rare. Their first game, a dual-character hop’n’bopper, harkened back convincingly to the glory days of Banjo Kazooie, but didn’t set my world alight as a reviewer. Their subsequent 2.5D Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair found a warmer reception, however, and in 2021 they launched a publishing division, Playtonic Friends, partnering with projects such as Demon Tides and BPM: Bullets Per Minute. Tencent bought a minority stake in Playtonic later that year.

2020-2021 was a boom period for the games industry at large, thanks to a whole lot of us playing games at home during the pandemic lockdowns. Many publishers expanded to meet the demand, and were left up the creek when the lockdowns ended and the cash ceased to flow in sufficient quantities for their investors. This, at least, is the increasingly worn-out elevator summary I woozily mutter to myself as I try to scroll to the bottom of our layoffs feed. I’d like Playtonic to say more about why these layoffs were necessary.

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