The “consequences” of Elemental‘s “disastrous” launch were swift as Stardock CEO Brad Wardell has confirmed layoffs at the company. ShackNews reported yesterday that those let go included developers, designers, and salespeople working on Elemental. Wardell stated in his post on the subject that these are the first layoffs to the company since 1998, while elaborating, “Elemental‘s revenue was anticipated to provide the revenue both for our main games team’s next project as well as a second team. Unfortunately, that is unlikely to happen so we’ve had to start laying people off.”
Joystiq has been informed by a source that this is only the first round of layoffs at Stardock and that the final count will be about 20 people. We’ve also been told the “games team itself is/was only 15 people big,” so the layoffs will affect others at the company and outside contract workers. Survivors of the cuts will allegedly include the game’s producer, art lead, and two lead developers. The source claims, “All of the posts [Wardell] has made in our public forums about how the games team is funded by our commercial software development and that Elemental was not rushed out the door for monetary reasons is a lie. These people are getting laid off due to poor sales and Stardock’s inability to pay back the capital investors that funded Elemental‘s development.”
We contacted Stardock yesterday about the layoffs, but have yet to hear directly from the company. We’ll continue to update as we learn more.
Elemental launch results in Stardock layoffs originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 04 Sep 2010 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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