League of Geeks announces mass layoffs and halts Jumplight Odyssey development - will distribute 50% of early access profits to employees until work resumes
But only for a maximum of 12 months
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League of Geeks, the development studio currently working on space strategy sim gameJumplight Odysseyand turn-based political strategy gameSolium Infernum, has announced cuts to over 50% of its workforce. That includes the entireJumplight Odysseyteam, putting the early-access game’s development on hold indefinitely.
The news was announced in astatementposted to Twitter / X by League of Geeks co-founders and directors, Trent Kusters, Blake Mizzi, and Ty Carey. “Rapidly rising operation costs,” as well as “a weakening AUD, poor early access sales, and the unprecedented withdrawal of funding opportunities across the industry” were blamed for putting the studio “in a position where we could no longer afford to cover development costs.”
They added: “We are devastated to be in this position, and we have done everything in our power to avoid it. We are so very sorry.”
We’ve got some unfortunate news to share, folks. A thread: pic.twitter.com/hDjlrkKtdVDecember 5, 2023
Furthermore, inan updateposted on theJumplight OdysseySteampage, Kusters described the process of “saying goodbye to many of our closest friends” as “traumatic.” He clarified that the team doesn’t want this to be the end of the game: “If investment in the project becomes a reality, and the conditions exist where it is financially possible for us to boot this game back up, we absolutely will. The grim reality however, is that at least for right now, it’s a very scary time (economically) for indie developers of our size.”
It was also confirmed that in an effort to “give back” to the team who worked onJumplight Odyssey, “for the next 12 months or until development is resumed, whichever comes first, half of our profit from every copy sold will be distributed to our team (including those whose employment was impacted).”
As for the studio’s other ongoing project,Solium Infernum, the already-announced February 14, 2024 launch date apparently won’t be affected by the layoffs. The same goes for the ongoing support of League of Geeks’ fairytale board gameArmello.
Looking for some new game recommendations? You can find some fantastic pics from smaller developers in our roundups of thebest indie games, as well as thebest indie horror games.
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Catherine is a News Writer for TechRadar Gaming. Armed with a journalism degree from The University of Sheffield, she was sucked into the games media industry after spending far too much time on her university newspaper writing about Pokémon and cool indie games, and realising that was a very cool job, actually. She previously spent 19 months working at GAMINGbible as a full-time journalist. She loves all things Nintendo, and will never stop talking about Xenoblade Chronicles.
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