After seeing a ton of folks losing their jobs in 2023, you’d figure we could take a moratorium on the practice for a few months. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case as Bossa Studios draws first blood in 2024.
As the bulk of the workforce finished their first work week in 2024, Bossa Studios made the decision to lay off 19 employees. This leaves 40 people left to continue working on their latest game Lost Skies.
The news was confirmed by GamesIndustry.biz. Co-founder Henrique Olifiers stated that cuts were due to a “perfect storm of events.” Reasons given were rising operational costs, funding decisions, and big holiday games hurting indie titles. Also, not releasing a game this year might have had some influence.
Resulting from this blue moon situation, we had to make the difficult decision to reshape the studio to reflect the position we find ourselves in at the end of this year, focusing all our efforts now on Lost Skies. This means we find ourselves in the heartbreaking position of having to let roughly one-third of the studio go–amongst them, some of our closest colleagues.”
Bossa Studios co-founder Henrique Olifiers
Bossa Studios is the team behind hits such as I Am Bread and the Surgeon Simulator series. It had recently sold its rights to those games to TinyBuild so that the studio could make Lost Skies.
We are doubling down on a new vertical, so it makes sense for us to have a war chest that enables us to weather any kind of delays or large investment we decide to make in this new game we’re making.”
Bossa Studios co-founder Henrique Olifiers
Apparently, it just wasn’t enough to keep everyone on the team. It truly is sad to see so many talented individuals having to leave steady jobs.
Here’s hoping that they will be able to get back on their feet and make some amazing games again!
Souce: GameSpot
