Atari Closes Two Offices in the US (Bad news for everybody?)

[Civrules]

I posted this on Cutlass Isle too.
Atari seems to be closing two offices in the US. They are in Beverly MA, and in Santa Monica CA. This is to cut costs…

http://www.cgonline.com/content/view/242/
http://www.cgonline.com/content/view/245/

In its regular quarterly financial statement today, game publisher Infogrames (who operates under the Atari brand) announced today that two of their US offices would be shut down.



According to their statement, Atari will be closing both their Santa Monica, CA and Beverly, MA offices and consolidating their US publishing efforts in their main New York City branch. "In addition to having an impact on the profitability of operations, these measures represent the first stage of a plan aimed at reducing overhead and improving the operation of our US subsidiaries," according to the press release.



Computer Games Magazine talked to employees of Atari’s Santa Monica operations today who confirmed that the offices would soon close, although there is no immediate word on when exactly that will happen. There is also no word on exactly how many employees would be laid off or if any of them will be offered jobs in Atari's New York City offices.



This is the latest in a series of cost-cutting moves by Infogrames/Atari in the past couple of years. During that time period, the publisher has shut down game development studios in Maryland and Virigina as well as the former WizardWorks offices in Minnesota. Atari has also lost a couple of their major game franchises in the past several months as Epic Games moved their Unreal Tournament series to Midway and Atari sold the Civilization strategy series to Take Two Interactive.

Computer Games Magazine has more information about Atari's announced plans to shut down two of their offices in the US today from the publisher's PR spokesperson.

In a phone conversation today, Atari spokesperson Nancy Bushkin told Computer Games Magazine that plans are still being formulated for how the closing of their Beverly, MA and Santa Monica, CA offices will be handled. Bushkin did confirm that the closings will not happen immediately and Atari plans to contact the people in both offices over the next several days to find out what the exact time frame will be for consolidating their publishing operations. Those jobs will soon be based out of Atari’s main corporate facilities in New York City Bushkin would not state how many people would be laid off as there will be some team members who will move to New York City. Bushkin said there are currently 70 people at their Beverly, MA offices and 25 at their Santa Monica, CA offices. The team members affected were in sales, marketing and PR along with game producers.

With the upcoming shut down of these two facilities, Atari will soon only have their main New York City offices, while QA and game testing will remain in Sunnyvale, CA. Atari also still operates three US game developers; Humongous Entertainment in Bothell, WA, Shiny Entertainment in Newport Beach, CA and Paradigm Entertainment in Carrollton, Texas.

So why is this bad?
First of all, that means that Jeff Foley, who we have know for a long, long time might be laid off (since he is in Beverly MA), and second of all, it might affect patching for Pirates!, although we can't be sure.

Atari has had a rough time recently as you know. They sold off the Civilization Franchise to get some extra lost cash, and now they are doing this.

But I think that the worst is about Jeff. He has been so helpful in both the Civ community and the Pirates! community.