Silicon Knights has finally confirmed the layoffs that were reported yesterday and CFO Mike Mays has clarified that "just under 40" employees remain, rather than the cited 25 employees figure in the initial 1UP report. A total of 45 employees were axed, said Mays, largely because of a project that got canceled.
“We just finished a project with [Activision Blizzard Inc.] that got completed,” he explained to the Financial Post, referring to the critically panned X-Men Destiny title. “We had another project lined up that had been in the works for months, which had been green-lit and at the final second, at the high corporate level, the project got canceled. We don’t know why. Probably something to do with the publisher on their side, but that resulted in us having too many people so we had to do a layoff.”
X-Men didn't seem to get a ton of marketing support, and it was released at the start of what's probably the most jam-packed holiday quarter for the industry in many years. It was a recipe for disaster.
Now the future of Siicon Knights is unclear. The developer is currently negotiating contracts for new projects, according to Mays. No details on those projects are available, but if the company can get one or more projects green-lit, Mays indicated that Silicon Knights would seek to rehire the individuals who were let go during this round of layoffs. “So hopefully this layoff will be short term,” Mays remarked.
