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Obsidian lays off some Armored Warfare devs as project moves to Moscow

L

LordOfLore

Banned
Article by Gamasutra.

Fallout: New Vegas and Tyranny developer Obsidian Entertainment has laid off an undisclosed number of developers working on the free-to-play game, Armored Warfare.

The cuts, scheduled to take effect early next year, are the result of a decision made by Armored Warfare publisher My.com to partially move development of the project to the company’s headquarters in Moscow.

Despite the shift, Obsidian will continue to work on Armored Warfare, which entered open beta last year, in partnership with IllFonic and My.com.

A representative from Obsidian confirmed the layoffs to Gamasutra and offered the following statement from Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart:

"This week we let some of our developers on Armored Warfare know that they are being laid off early next year. The publisher of Armored Warfare decided to move a portion of the development of the product to their headquarters in Moscow. We remain extremely proud of Armored Warfare and all the work we have and will continue to put into it. None of the other products at Obsidian were affected by this. We wish our people the best, and are working with them to find homes with other developers."
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Always sad when this happen.
 
N

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
Bear Cub in Sky said:
Woah. How many people is that?
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gdt said:
Woah what?
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They're over 200 people, with something like 140 on this game.

Eternity is around 20, there were 5 on that Russian MMO, 5 or 10 on the card game, another... 20-30 on Tyranny, and 5-10 prototyping that new IP they keep shopping around IIRC.

I can look up more exact numbers later. 70% might be slightly too high, but it's around that range.

Their goal is to move people over to a AAA RPG, but they have to find a publisher, and that's... not easy in 2017.
 
SEGAvangelist

SEGAvangelist

Gold Member
Nirolak said:
They're over 200 people, with something like 140 on this game.

Eternity is around 20, there were 5 on that Russian MMO, 5 or 10 on the card game, another... 20-30 on Tyranny, and 5-10 prototyping that new IP they keep shopping around IIRC.

I can look up more exact numbers later. 70% might be slightly too high, but it's around that range.

Their goal is to move people over to a AAA RPG, but they have to find a publisher, and that's... not easy in 2017.
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MS needs an RPG. Too bad they probably hate each other.
 
A

Arulan

Member
Obsidian has gone through some tough times. The most recent, which almost collapsed the company was Microsoft's cancellation of Stormlands. I hope they can recover from this setback.

Bear Cub in Sky said:
MS needs an RPG. Too bad they probably hate each other.
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No shit.

animlboogy said:
I'm not sure if we have any info on the scale of what Tim Cain's doing, so I guess it isn't an AAA type project that could've grabbed these people in the process of scaling up.
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That's the Leonard Boyarsky joint that is rumored to be a White Wolf IP RPG. I wonder if they'd try for an isometric perspective, or if they'd keep to the strengths of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines.
 
T

ThoseDeafMutes

Member
animlboogy said:
Layoffs are always sad news... it's too bad they didn't have anything else going on to move this staff to. Tim Cain's project, whatever the Tyranny team is doing now (expansions?), and Josh Sawyer's team are all at capacity, apparently?

I'm not sure if we have any info on the scale of what Tim Cain's doing, so I guess it isn't an AAA type project that could've grabbed these people in the process of scaling up.
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I still think they have something brewing with Paradox and the WoD IP, but I would sooner guess that it's just a PoE or Tyranny scale project, and almost certainly not anything resembling an AAA production that could take on that many staff members.
 
B

Basileus777

Member
So this is what Avellone was tweeting about a few days ago. Poor Obsidian. I don't know who is going to fund a AAA RPG of theirs.

ThoseDeafMutes said:
I still think they have something brewing with Paradox and the WoD IP, but I would sooner guess that it's just a PoE or Tyranny scale project, and almost certainly not anything resembling an AAA production that could take on that many staff members.
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Yeah, Paradox is not doing anything as risky as funding a AAA project.
 
F

Forsaken82

Member
Nirolak said:
They're over 200 people, with something like 140 on this game.

Eternity is around 20, there were 5 on that Russian MMO, 5 or 10 on the card game, another... 20-30 on Tyranny, and 5-10 prototyping that new IP they keep shopping around IIRC.

I can look up more exact numbers later. 70% might be slightly too high, but it's around that range.

Their goal is to move people over to a AAA RPG, but they have to find a publisher, and that's... not easy in 2017.
Click to expand...

It's easy finding a publisher... the hard part is finding a publisher that gives you creative control and ownership over the IP which I guarantee is what they would be looking for regarding a new IP.
 
M

Mivey

Member
Basileus777 said:
So this is what Avellone was tweeting about a few days ago. Poor Obsidian. I don't know who is going to fund a AAA RPG of theirs.
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CD Projekt must have some of that Witcher 3 money laying around. I guess they could call themselves CD Projekt Black (Isle).
 
M

MartyStu

Member
Shit, this sucks.

That said, unlike many here, I do not particularly care if Obsidian does not work on their own AAA title. Their output has been satisfying enough.
 
B

Basileus777

Member
Hero_of_the_Day said:
I'm curious why/how they wound up not working on the new South Park after Stick of Truth turned out so well.
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Because Ubisoft could easily bring it in house and keep Matt and Trey as the main writers. The first game had its share of development difficulties too, though much of that could be blamed on THQ.

MartyStu said:
Shit, this sucks.

That said, unlike many here, I do not particularly care if Obsidian does not work on their own AAA title. Their output has been satisfying enough.
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Well I don't want most of their staff to lose their jobs. But I can't help but fear that the size of the studio is unsustainable.
 
A

Atilac

Member
Nirolak said:
They're over 200 people, with something like 140 on this game.

Eternity is around 20, there were 5 on that Russian MMO, 5 or 10 on the card game, another... 20-30 on Tyranny, and 5-10 prototyping that new IP they keep shopping around IIRC.

I can look up more exact numbers later. 70% might be slightly too high, but it's around that range.

Their goal is to move people over to a AAA RPG, but they have to find a publisher, and that's... not easy in 2017.
Click to expand...
Aren't they working on that torment game?
 
J

JerkShep

Member
I try to support them as much as I can but they are really stuck in a difficult position, it's been a long time since they have worked on a AA game but they're still a big studio all things considered. Hope everything turns out okay but they are in a dire situation
 
N

Nairume

Banned
It is getting increasingly concerning how it seems like they can't really find much in the way of publishers willing to work with them anymore.

Hopefully the thing about Fallout New Orleans pans out, otherwise they might be in for even rougher times ahead.
 
B

BlackLagoon

Member
Back-In-Black said:
Sony should just buy them.
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Sony generally doesn't buy studios without an established and successful relationship. Though I certainly wouldn't mind if they took the first step and tried working together on a project, there's no reason they couldn't work with Sony and still do other stuff on the side like Insomniac.

CertifiedFP said:
Considering Obsidian is primarily a PC game developer, no thx k.
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It's not like they haven't done console games before, and they clearly want to be in the AAA space which obviously means consoles/multiplatform.
 
L

Labadal

Member
From rpgcodex, one of the devs responds.
Thanks, I appreciate it, and I'm actually fine. Please keep the QA, map developers, and vehicle team developers who got their notice in your thoughts and prayers.

That synopsis is actually accurate - we always knew that we would ramp down AW to a support role while the MRG team in Moscow ramped up to live development - with the intention of shifting people over to our other projects - which we have done. For those we couldn't make room for, there was advance notice and severance. There was also a ramping down some of our QA as more and more QA responsibilities were taken on by Bytex.

Regarding my feelings for AW, I love the game. I think Global Operations and Balance 2.0 are going to change the game for the better in enormous ways. This project has been an unexpected and wild ride, as well as a great opportunity for me to remember and relive some glorious memories as a tanker. WHEN or IF the final day comes on this project, I will miss it, truly.

This kind of thing always sucks, even when you know it's coming, and even when the company is in a strong place, which we are. We still have ~200 employees after the layoffs, and multiple signed projects - it's just our role in AW is now a support role.

No surprises, no drama. Sure there is sadness, these people are really talented and awesome to work with.

For the response about why I didn't say anything sooner - One, I don't speak for Obsidian and Two, the internet is a horrible buzzfeed-clickbaity hell hole. There are organizations who are hungry for any sort of story that they can use to stoke page views and I don't want to be a part of that.
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N

Nairume

Banned
BlackLagoon said:
Sony generally doesn't buy studios without an established and successful relationship. Though I certainly wouldn't mind if they took the first step and tried working together on a project, there's no reason they couldn't work with Sony and still do other stuff on the side like Insomniac.
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It also feels like there's been plenty of opportunity for them to try and shop something to Sony in the past and stuff just hasn't gone well on that front, possibly for the same reasons that Microsoft bailed on them.
 
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