Layoffs :(

[pjotroos]

If Ed Beach didn't believe in the direction of the game he should have resigned.

I always find statements like that so confusing. How many people do you know that resign from their job unless all decisions go their way? Cause that's not the job market where I live.

More broadly, I find it so crass that people use the news of layoffs as another excuse to call for the game director's head yet again. We are not privy to what happened. We have no way of knowing whether this is even linked to the game's performance. There were so many layoffs in the game industry in the last couple of years, very often off the back of record profits. My personal assumption is that they recruited more people to complete the game, and now that the work on RtR is finished they're laying them off to look better in the next quarterly report. But it just assumption, and whatever happened, we don't know - but I'm willing to bet that this isn't what Ed Beach wanted, he's probably still having an awful day, and ripping into him is unhealthy. You wanna blame anyone, blame the 2K execs.

 

[Kenshiro70]

The timing is interesting because they're advertising for a Head of Product for Civ 7 and this would allow that person to come in without having to run a round of layoffs. That's actually really helpful, as no one wants to come in and get that reputation.

Unfortunately the clock's been ticking ever since the Switch 2 release, since almost no third-party vendors really did that well sales-wise. And it looks like 2K bet heavily on marketing Civ VII for that - Firaxis appeared in most of the big Nintendo announcements.

End of quarter always is a danger zone, though I was hoping they'd at least have through the end of this one.

Something similar happened with Bioware where they effectively dropped from a multi-project studio to a single-project studio after Mass Effect Andromeda, Anthem, and Veilguard. That's incredibly sad because it heavily lower chances of Firaxis' other IPs (especially XCOM) getting some love any time soon. Heck, I loved Midnight Suns and would have loved to see more.

 

[itix]

I’ve been reading the Reddit stuff but didn’t see that. Wow! I thought it was like 30. And wouldn’t there have been a WARN notice if it’s more than like 50 people? (That’s a 60 days warning that company is laying people off in the States for members in other countries.)

There is only this one:

https://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/1n8dpir/comment/ncebhcw

If there was a WARN notice, is it public or publicly recorded?

 

[Crashdummy]

Sad to see this happen, but not unexpected

The current playerbase of Civ 7 cant sustain the huge development costs they surely had attached. Of course, the ones that get cut are not the ones to blame, as almost always happen

Whoever made the decision to make the game revolve around Ages and Civ switching should be the one getting fired, but he probably wont. Hope these people get a new job soon

As opposed to the publisher? That defeniately pressured Firaxis to rush the release?

Rushed release was just one of the issues, but the main issue is a failed design, which isnt 2k fault, but a bad design decision from someone at Firaxis

 

[Maiq]

This isn't really the place for this discussion overall, but many people's issues with the game have nothing to do with the release itself being rushed, they're deep-set design decisions that would need player feedback to change, and would be likely not to change just with internal testing:

• the UX/UI readability issues were not a matter of missing assets, the art assets look stellar. The UI flow is just not very intuitive (e.g. people not understanding how army deployment works) and the city appearance simply blends into a mess because of the art style. Those are issues that aren't a matter of rushing the development, unless additional development time would've led to the UX being redone (seems unlikely as the UX/UI appears polished, even if not functional, for release)
• "Classic" mode checkbox was added due to player complaints about age transitions behaviors (deleting units/resetting army locations, regressing cities into towns, etc), the age transitions were touted as a core feature of the game and no classic mode would have been added for a delayed launch as that would be antithesis to the game's design
• Complaints about lacking "logical" civ transitions or desired leaders on-launch would have not been changed at all by a delayed release, since this would have disrupted the DLC model of the game and thus future monetization/profitability

There's no doubt the game was rushed and that's why bugs and basic features like auto-scout are missing. But that's not the core of what makes the game so unfun to many people (at least on this forum). That core is the game's design, which Ed Beach is responsible for as the Creative Director. Thus, bringing him up as someone who maybe should have suffered a layoff or reprimand when the company is laying off so many workers who did accomplish what was asked of them, with quality, is totally fair and not necessarily targeting him unfairly.

Nobody hates corporations more than me (well, maybe some do, but I hate them quite a bit), but I think pinning Civ7's failure on just 2K rushing it is doing the game's overall quality a bit too much service.

Thanks for pulling my exact thoughts out of my head lol. I would say too, as a former big time NBA2K fan, I am more than willing to throw 2k under the bus for even the smallest of things but I just can't say the lion's share of the blame falls on them this time.

 

[Kenshiro70]

I’ve been reading the Reddit stuff but didn’t see that. Wow! I thought it was like 30. And wouldn’t there have been a WARN notice if it’s more than like 50 people? (That’s a 60 days warning that company is laying people off in the States for members in other countries.)

It's 50 at a site. So if 21 of those were remote it wouldn't have triggered the WARN Act.

I wonder if it's mainly based on seniority that they chose most of the people laid off... If so, I'm a little concerned for our friend @sukritact !

Not a guarantee by any means, but the younger people are usually cheaper and are less likely to be hit. Of course, they're expected to take up the slack afterwards, so it's not fun by any means.

 

[Solver]

Sad to see this - 2025 continues to be a difficult year for the industry with many layoffs. I hope all those affected can find new employment soon.

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

I always find statements like that so confusing. How many people do you know that resign from their job unless all decisions go their way? Cause that's not the job market where I live.

More broadly, I find it so crass that people use the news of layoffs as another excuse to call for the game director's head yet again. We are not privy to what happened. We have no way of knowing whether this is even linked to the game's performance. There were so many layoffs in the game industry in the last couple of years, very often off the back of record profits. My personal assumption is that they recruited more people to complete the game, and now that the work on RtR is finished they're laying them off to look better in the next quarterly report. But it just assumption, and whatever happened, we don't know - but I'm willing to bet that this isn't what Ed Beach wanted, he's probably still having an awful day, and ripping into him is unhealthy. You wanna blame anyone, blame the 2K execs.

Respectfully disagree with where the fault is. We are 6 months post release and the game is still broken and now on top of that seemingly directionless. The fault is squarely on the design, the rush job just ripped the bandage sooner than intended.

I actually agree with you that this is inevitable. The industry often lays people off post release, so I'm not presuming this is related to game performance. They are also hiring roles to fix things and have made statements supporting the long term future of the game after all.

And final points, Ed Beach is the creative lead. he absolutely should not be leading development of a game he doesn't believe in. You'd have to have absolutely 0 moral fibre to be cashing in cheques whilst leading people on a venture you are sure is going to result in failure and their eventual lay off. When you are in a position of leadership, you need to be a leader, someone with principles and vision, not just someone looking to get their pay cheque each month. To be clear, I think Ed is a leader with vision, I just disagree with his vision.

 

[Kenshiro70]

I posted this separately, so please forgive repeating some of it, but even with this sad turn of events, we at CivFanatics are in a unique position to help out Firaxis going forward.

I'm talking about the "orphan" Mods. There are a bunch of them, really good ones (like Zhekoff's Diplomacy Banners) that haven't gotten ported to Steam Workshop and are starting to become obsolete. If you want to help out and you know one of the original authors, it would really help if you ask them to either port the mod or work with another modder to pass over ownership.

And if you're a modder, consider either taking over one of the orphans or incorporating its functionality into your own Steam workshop mod then putting a reference to being the "spiritual successor" to the other mod.

I'll be honest, the only reason I made it to 1100 play hours was the 40+ mods I was running that kept me from going insane with the UI jankiness. We need to make sure that others have the same opportunity.

 

[socratic]

This does make me concerned about the future direction of Civ 7. Cutting out a big part of the art team is not what a developer does if they’re planning new content. This seems to me either
1. the art/concept stage for DLC content for Civ 7 has already been completed, which means there arent anymore plans for the foreseeable future
or
2. A big chunk of future content was already cut so they are transition to smaller team for DLC

 

[Glassmage]

This is Ed Beach's fault. People are out of a job because of him! They got way too comfortable after Civ5 GnK/BNW and Civ6 success.

 

[Gorbles]

A lot of people here don't seem to understand how layoffs in the industry work. And that's fine. Nobody needs to know things that are mostly irrelevant to their daily lives.

But "it's Ed Beach's fault" undermines the effort a team put into building Civ VII. The team is more than Ed Beach. Firaxis' management is more than Ed Beach, to say nothing of 2K.

And on top of that, it suggests that layoffs are the result of poor game performance.

That isn't really the case. Maybe it was, once. But these days layoffs (especially post-Covid) have become a c-suite tool to boost market value in the short to medium term. Individual games don't really matter to a company the size of 2K.

Maybe the odd game will make a dent (we're talking GTA here. I'm not even sure Borderlands qualifies), but by and large the budget for development is far less than pretty much any software house out there. Some games (CoD, etc) are famous for spending equal if not more money on marketing alone (compared to development).

Are they often first on the chopping block? Ironically, yes. Just the same as ActiBlizzard laying off tonnes of community management, QA, and related jobs before being acquired by Microsoft. Who then (despite promises) laid off thousands more.

It's not because WoW isn't doing well. It's not because Microsoft products are unprofitable. It's because of the impact on stock prices. Layoffs often raise it. This creates a perverse incentive to not invest in growing teams, and instead cut them the second something might potentially impact on an executives bonus.

There's a meme in games development circles.

"make a bad game? get laid off"

"make a good game? surprisingly, still get laid off"

It's not about the quality. And those in the industry are very aware of that.

 

[King Flevance]

I saw a guy on youtube discussing these layoffs and he brought up a good point. Q3 is ending soon and we will be going into Q4. This was most likely a maneuver to increase stock prices before the final quarter and irrelevant to Civ's reception. Consolidating those jobs post-release before Q4 means profits for the suits.

It is an interesting view that makes sense, for sure. It is a shame that the wealthy will throw people out for just a little bit more money. But it sounds like this is to be expected in that field too. It is unfortunate.

 

[AddAdamSmith]

I hate to have to be the shareholders’ strongest soldier, but it’s difficult to reconcile this forum’s popular stated opinion on management decisions and the game.

If I had to summarize however many threads of discourse, I would paraphrase the modal opinion as “Civ VII has a very nice production value, but it is too expensive and that does not outweigh the other things I dislike.” Many posters would even state explicitly that they prefer much older games with much lower production budgets.

Is it shocking then that someone responsible for the allocation of limited resources might decide that production is not the most efficient use of said resources?

AAA games continue to increase in cost and scope, and at some point investors will question the cost when even the most vocal fans are saying it doesn’t affect their purchasing decision!

 

[Crashdummy]

I saw a guy on youtube discussing these layoffs and he brought up a good point. Q3 is ending soon and we will be going into Q4. This was most likely a maneuver to increase stock prices before the final quarter and irrelevant to Civ's reception. Consolidating those jobs post-release before Q4 means profits for the suits.

It is an interesting view that makes sense, for sure. It is a shame that the wealthy will throw people out for just a little bit more money. But it sounds like this is to be expected in that field too. It is unfortunate.

That would be reasonable if it was something Firaxis does frequently

It isnt, we have 4 Quarters every year, yet we dont have these layoffs. And we have a lot more indicators that tells us Civ VII is failing, so i am sorry, i think this is a direct consequence of Civ VII reception

 

[Core Imposter]

I wish all of those affected the best future. Godspeed.

 

[King Flevance]

That would be reasonable if it was something Firaxis does frequently

It isnt, we have 4 Quarters every year, yet we dont have these layoffs. And we have a lot more indicators that tells us Civ VII is failing, so i am sorry, i think this is a direct consequence of Civ VII reception

We see them cutting down a department after a product has been launched. Consolidating roles. DLC and patches can be supported by 2/3 or 3/4 of a team. (Primarily artwork is being delegated)

They wouldn't do this frequently. Only after a large project has been finished and completed its launch. (The roadmap) It is timed right at the end of the road map. Their promise to consumers who pre-ordered has been fulfilled. This makes sense from a business perspective.

Edit: I am not saying 7's release has nothing to do with it but I don't think this is a burning ship by any means.

 

[leif erikson]

Moderator Action: The OP stated this:
"Please let this thread be in consideration of those affected and be constructive."

This thread is not here to assess blame, it is for those affected. Stop discussing blame, doing so will result in an immediate thread ban! Please be respectful.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Askia Muhammad]

Very intrigued as to why they are mostly animators and writers. Best of luck for them, layoffs are not always the right answer.
Edit: Siptah beat me to the same comment xD

Possible conspiracy: AI is just being used to do some of these things now and them being laid off may have nothing to do with game reception at all.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

I don't know if this will be the end of Sid Meier's Civilization franchise?