Silicon Knights Lays of 25 to 30

Silicon Knights laid off 25 to 30 employees today.

An anonymous reader contacted us this afternoon to let us know the Canadian-based developer behind Too Human has let us know that about 10:30 a .m. today 25 to 30 employees were brought into the lecture theater inside the office and told they were being laid off.

"It seemed as though most of those laid off were people who had been hired to work for the company within the last year or so, however many had been heavily involved in the production of Too Human."

Reached for comment Monday Silicon Knights officials had this to say:

After any big game ships, there is often some attrition. Teams are lean and mean in the beginning, grow toward the end of the project, and then whittle down once the project is finished. To that end, Silicon Knights temporarily laid-off 26 employees today while they ramp up on other projects. All the company’s directors and leads are still at Silicon Knights and working on its next projects.

The slight cutback comes after four years of unprecedented growth for the St. Catharines’, Ontario (Canada) company, during which its headcount had expanded to more than 180 employees.

Denis Dyack, President and founder of the company, stated, “Silicon Knights is currently working on several new and exciting games that will be announced to the public in the coming months. In addition to those projects, Silicon Knights continues to develop and promote other new and original ideas, which will become the innovative games of tomorrow. These 26 individuals are hard-working and valued team members that we hope to bring back as we ramp up on our future projects.”

Seems like a weird thing to do if you have a trilogy of a game coming out.

Is the trilogy of this game in question?  Or is this a part of the norm? 

Discuss.

When a game spends so many years in development and sells so poorly, despite a lot of hype, you have to compensate. Unfortunately with the current state of the economy in the US and many other countries laying off can be your only option. I heard Wal-Mart is hiring.

I kid. I kid.

Apparently Too Human 2 (and 3?) is well into development. As in the development has been going on for some time. It's possible these are the people that got done on Too Human and weren't needed for Too Human 2.

Sounds like they were contractors. I finished Too Human, it was short with an abrupt ending, but the combat was fun and so was co-op.

As it says, these are temporary layoffs. This isn't even that uncommon in the industry, and has been done by much larger companies at much better times. Really, nothing to see here.

by the time Too Human 3 comes out ,PS9 will be 199$ ;)

too human flop confimed

in all seriousness though...man stuff like like this this makes me scared to work in the game industry, the fact that people in this industry have no job security what so ever, and on top of that its very hard to find a job in the first place is scary. but hey i love games so i do want to experience the joy of doing something you love for a living.

This is for guy named acheng Dont ask he'll know.

I seriously doubt that Too Human 2 and 3 are well underway. I have this feeling that they finally got Too Human done (mostly) and had to ship it. With only 180 employees I dont see them working one 3 "Top Shelf" games at once.

The fact that they dropped 25 people with two games coming up behind this one, based on all the same tech at least to me says that the future of the trilogy might be a little iffy. You keep the people that worked on the first game all the way through to make the next two move smoother.

Also he says they are working on "Several" new games to be announced. Several? And they fired a good portion of their staff with good experience? Theres more here then the spin they released.