Home Gaming Carbine Studios have laid off 40% of their workforce

Carbine Studios have laid off 40% of their workforce

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Carbine Studios

Six months ago, Carbine Studios, the developers of (the rather excellent) WildStar, shifted the business model of their MMORPG from subscription-based to free-to-play. I thought it was a particularly smart move on their part, because love it or hate it, F2P has done wonders for other titles in the genre, and WildStar really needed a jumpstart of sorts.

Unfortunately, it seems that dropping the subscription fee didn’t yield the desired results. Carbine Studios have now announced that they have canned their plans to take Wildstar East, and as a result, have had to downscale their workforce:

Earlier this morning, Carbine Studios completed a reorganization of its operating structure. Moving forward, the studio will focus on operating and updating WildStar as a live game in the US and Europe. As part of this change, the studio has cancelled its plans to bring WildStar to China.

Unfortunately, as a result of these changes, we’ve had to reduce staff. These cuts are directly tied to WildStar’s evolution from a product in development to a live title, to the cancellation of work to bring WildStar to China, and to the overall performance of WildStar since launch in 2014.

These kinds of decisions are exceptionally difficult. The talented and passionate professionals who are impacted by these cuts have been valuable team members and respected colleagues. We wish everyone well for the future and will be providing severance and employment search assistance.

According to Polygon, more than 70 people have lost their jobs at Carbine. That translates into around 40% of the entire workforce being gone. Despite this, Carbine Studios say that they will be continuing support for WildStar into the future:

As for WildStar, we remain committed to the game. Over the next few weeks and months we will deliver a significant update to the game, kick off a variety of community events, and continue our work on new content that we will talk more about in the near future.

I hope things work out. I really have a soft spot for WildStar, and I’d hate to see it shutting down. Do you still play it? Are you a big fan?

Last Updated: March 14, 2016

7 Comments

  1. I’ll be honest…I’ve never heard of Carbine, or Wildstar.
    Shame though to lay of so many people.

    Reply

    • Pariah

      March 14, 2016 at 10:13

      Well, it was a pretty excellent MMO that should never have been subscription based.

      Reply

      • hairyknees

        March 14, 2016 at 10:22

        Yeah but they dropped that 🙁 pity it doesn’t seem to be working out for them

        Reply

        • Pariah

          March 14, 2016 at 10:39

          They dropped it once the hype had died. If they started without it, things could have turned out differently. Unfortunately, there are just too many alternatives now with shinier graphics and features. The art style is a bit dated, but the mechanics are sound. All it needed was a solid player base.

          Right now, everyone’s on Blade and Soul, or if you have access, Black Desert Online (God I wish we had access).

          Reply

          • GalacticLordCaptainAwesomeness

            March 14, 2016 at 11:34

            and I’m just sitting here playing neverwinter…

  2. Tarisma

    March 14, 2016 at 14:18

    Played at launch and got to max level and really enjoyed it, even completed 2 of the end game raid bosses, the game just had too many issues, sometimes you just got crazy lag in raids, the end game raid gear just wasn’t worth anything, PvP was non existent and it was incredibly unforgiving. Eventually the players got more and more frustrated and began to leave and the roster boss became the biggest issue.

    A classic case of a game launched before it was ready.

    Reply

  3. Strawman Jim

    June 8, 2016 at 10:50

    That sucks, I hope that they all land on their feet.

    ADDITIONALLY – Why couldn’t it have been Polygon who lost 40% of their work force; what a turd stain on the underpants of the internet…

    Reply

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