Indie publisher Team17 to lay-off a “significant” number of employees

In the past few weeks we have seen a whole host of different studios and publishers announce lay-offs, with thousands of developers in total losing their jobs. Unfortunately, it seems as though the trend is not slowing down any time soon, with indie publisher Team17 revealing that a restructuring of their company is set to bring ‘significant’ job losses.

As first reported by Eurogamer, Team17 – who are known best for developing the Worms and Overcooked franchises – were said to be engaging in a bunch of layoffs as part of a company restructure. A majority of the affected developers were said to be from the company’s QA department, with the publisher set to outsource these roles instead.

That is not all however, as the publisher’s CEO Michael Pattison was also said to be leaving. In response to the report, Team17 confirmed these departures to VG247, releasing a statement saying “In response to the reports concerning the departure of Michael Pattison from Team17, we can confirm we have amicably parted ways with Michael.”

The statement continues, “We can also confirm that we have sadly entered into a period of consultation today within Team17 Digital, with Astragon and Storytoys remaining unaffected by the restructuring plans.”

It is disappointing to see so many publishers letting go of dozens or even hundreds of developers in such a short period of time. Hopefully the video games industry is able to regain some form of consistency and job security moving forward – though this is unfortunately unlikely.

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KitGuru says: What do you think of all these recent layoffs? How can companies avoid this in the future? Let us know your thoughts down below.

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