Mighty Coconut, indie studio behind hit VR sport Walkabout Mini Golf (2020), introduced one other spherical of layoffs affecting ~35% of workers.
“That is an extremely laborious message to put in writing, however I wish to proceed to be clear with the Walkabout group,” writes Mighty Coconut CEO Lucas Martell in an organization weblog submit. “Because of the present state of the video games business and particularly VR, Mighty Coconut might want to downsize, and over the following a number of months we might be saying goodbye to 10 gifted individuals who have helped make Walkabout what it’s.”
This follows a spherical of layoffs in January that affected 25% of the studio, successfully decreasing Mighty Coconut to simply 27 on the time, additionally coming alongside a DLC value hike that raised all forthcoming DLC by $1, with new programs shifting from $4 to $5.
“Whereas we already downsized final January, I didn’t anticipate simply how quickly and deeply this trajectory would proceed,” Martell continues. “The wonderful programs and worlds created by our gifted crew have allowed us to fare higher than many studios who’ve needed to shut utterly, however with out a regular stream of recent gamers coming into VR and Walkabout, the size at which we’ve been working is not sustainable.”
Martell maintains that “Walkabout isn’t going anyplace,” because the studio guarantees to proceed its regular launch of DLC programs, albeit “rather less usually as a result of lowered crew measurement that returns us to the small and scrappy means we began.”
Martell says that within the meantime, the studio is diversifying income with continued work on Walkabout Dungeon Golfer, an upcoming hybrid VR/flatscreen roguelike dungeon crawler that includes golf mechanics, and GRASS, a flatscreen co-op lawn-care simulator.
“Whereas extremely painful, that is the one plan of action that permits us to maintain the sport alive, the servers lively, and maintain on to as a lot of our crew as attainable,” Martell maintains.
Mighty Coconut is much from the one studio at present underneath strain from a contracting VR video games business; this 12 months alone has seen a lot of VR studio closures, reductions, and cancelled initiatives.
Meta’s XR Actuality Labs division noticed a reported 10 % workers layoff earlier this 12 months, which included the closure of Sanzaru Video games (Asgard’s Wrath), Armature Studio (Resident Evil 4 VR port) and Twisted Pixel (Deadpool VR).
Business extensive finances cuts additionally reportedly noticed the cancellation of a Harry Potter VR sport for Quest from Skydance Video games, Batman: Arkham Shadows sequel from Sanzaru, and a “main mission” from Moss developer Polyarc, which introduced final month it was shuttering the studio consequently.
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