Bummer, Harmonix experiences more Layoffs

Per Polygon

Harmonix Music Systems laid off 37 full-time employees today, and Alex Rigopulos, CEO and co-founder of the studio, is moving into a new management role, a representative for the company confirmed to Polygon today.

37 folks got laid off, Alex Rigapulos steps down as CEO (although he'll remain as "Creative Director"), and Chroma goes back to the drawing board, according to this Game Informer Article.

Ugh, this news is especially sad since they pimped so hard to finally get that Amplitude Kickstarter. They used to have around 200+ people working there during the Guitar Hero/Rockband days. How many people are left now?

What a freaking bummer. I hope they get better jobs soon.

I'm not a big rhythm game guy but Chroma being scrapped is really dissapointing. Makes sense though considering they were pooling all their resources into a game for a now nonexistent accessory.

It would have to have been higher if the kick starter wasn't a success right?

Not surprising, they are a little too "all in" with the Kinect.

And now Kinect is going the way of the dodo.

And to be frank, I doubt making games for Kinect was ever that lucrative, unless Microsoft pays devs a bonus for making games for the thing, which seems likely.

Damn shame. The personalities there are fantastic, it's too bad that's not how they make their money. Maybe those dance central games weren't as successful as I thought they were.

This. I love the folks at harmonix but i have zero interest in any of their games. I suspect i'm not the only one.

Hope the people who got laid off find work quickly.

I imagine that'd be true, then again, I think that they barely reached the kickstarter goal probably made them examine their main creative model of music rhythm based games.

Man, I bet it's fucking depressing in the Harmonix office right now. Let's just send them good wishes.

@toowalrus: Alex Rigapulos gave a talk about the history of Harmonix at PAXeast earlier this year and he mentioned that while rockband/dance central sold really well they were expensive to make, and the company was struggling before those came out so they owed a lot of money in loans and ultimately they mostly just broke even.

While i've not always been super interested in Harmonix games (with the exception of Rockband) it's sad to see a company that takes such cool creative risks struggle like this.

No surprises they said as much whe. The kick starter starter

Yeah, this isn't that surprising considering they're wrapping up Disney Fantasia and can't seem to secure funding for future titles. I'm sure publishers are being scared off now that the kinect is no longer in every xbox one and the best rhythm game they can come up with that uses a normal controller is a remake of a game that wasn't a big success the first time around. Their first person shooter idea, Chroma is also in dire straits and is being redesigned as well.

I feel bad for the people losing their jobs and I hope that Harmonix is able to pull through this rough patch.

Yes, they didn't have the benefit of pirating the music in their games. The music industry still has the power to bleed professionals that want to use their music dry. Even if they don't have that power anymore with the general public.

You mean Fantasia?

Infinity is Avalanche.

@mister_v: Right, got those confused.

If they had good ideas that would make money, they wouldn't be in this situation.

man this hits a little too close to home in a way, but i guess it was the same with Rich Gallup a couple years back.

hope the ones affected all land on their feet soon. i'll have a diet coke in their honor.

@thehbk: That's obviously subjective, but if you look at the critical reception to their products they almost never make a game that isn't widely considered to be very good.

Not the money part of course.

Thinking about it, it might explain why they did their kickstarter to meet their internal schedule. Maybe if it had been more successful there would be no layoff.

I remember Tim Schafer saying that if the kickstarter had not been this successful they would have done cut in personel too.

It's super shitty anyway.

My bet is a lot of these guys were working on Kinect projects and the news about the $399 Xbone killed the project.

I wonder if Harmonix is in the middle of doing a "Double Fine shift" where instead of one or two large music games, they will start branching out and make a bunch of different music oriented games. They already have Record Run and Amplitude, and since they seem to have a (from appearance) fairly music oriented staff maybe they should focus on making a bunch of small music rhythm based games... well, whatever, that's way easier said than done.

I'd play a castlevania style platformer starring John T Drake though.

I'm the opposite. I don't personally know anyone who works at Harmonix but I love their games.

Dance Central was a generation defining game for me and is the only exclusive with the potential to make me buy an entire new console for. Anything that hurts the possibility or potential quality of a Harmonix-ass-Harmonix Dance Central sequel SERIOUSLY bums me out.

(...and yeah, Fantasia was never going to make that money back with or without MS's recent Kinect announcement)

Damn you Microsoft!!1!

I wonder if this is the reason why Harmonix ran their kickstarter for such a short period of time...it would make sense to get that over with before layoffs were announced, investors would be a lot less likely to give a company money after a huge layoff.

The timing is very suspect.

Ouch. This is the reality of these jobs but I feel for everyone laid off there.

Makes me wonder if they'll be able to actually finish Amplitude at this rate, but my condolences go to those that lost their jobs.

Well, it was just announced that EA shut down mythic entertainment... todays a bummer........

Source

@mb: Probably more likely that there would have been more layoffs if the Kickstarter was unsuccessful. Have to imagine they weren't going to make staffing cuts without knowing what their budget and workload was going to be.

This is depressing news, I'm guessing people knew their jobs were about to be over once they saw that Amplitude wasn't doing huge numbers on Kickstarter.

I kind of assumed they knew this was coming beforehand (maybe a question of how many not if), hence the kickstarter as a last ditch effort to save as many jobs as possible.

My guess is they will finish Amplitude.

The music/rhythm genre went from niche to mainstream and is now returning to niche, layoffs are inevitable in this situation. They need to create something new and creative like they did with guitar hero and rock band.

@slag: Of course they knew this was coming...maybe only the executives and HR, but they knew. Layoffs like this aren't planned and executed within a week or two.

I thought that happened long ago, so that was kinda surprising to me. Warhammer Online was shut down last year, the new Dungeon Keeper doesn't seem to have been a success, and Mythic's old titles Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot have been in the hands of another developer for quite a while - Broadsword Online Games.

But I guess Mythic were the ones who brought EA games to GOG, the latest being SimCity 4, which was released earlier today, so I wonder what'll happen with that in the future.

While its not really surprising, big rhythm and kinect games pretty much dead at the moment, I feel sorry for anyone who is affected. It think the kickstarter was a little misjudged though, a big part of the advertising of it was showing a happy, functional studio, which is a little contrary to the reality. I don't think they should be condemned for it, but I think I would be a little perturbed if I was a backer.

WHOA, doesn't Paul Barnett and Carrie Gouskos work primarily for EA Mythic?

Paul is General manager. Carrie is head of studio operations.

Yeah, Barnett was involved in the getting-games-to-GOG stuff (as well as helping Wing Commander CIC with archiving the Wing Commander source code and design documents), so I really hope he'll be around somewhere at EA making sure their vast library of classic games won't get lost to time (since EA themselves, judging by the handling of the Battlefield series and that stuff, seem to have little interest in the back catalog).

I didn't know Chroma was cancelled. That really sucks... =[

I'd imagine this mostly has to do with Chroma, and maybe Record Run now that that's out. In the email they sent out regarding the end of the closed early alpha a day or two ago, they said they'd be doing some major retooling to the game, but it sounded like they'd just be going back to work.

Based on the terrific feedback we got from all of you in the community, as well as our own analysis, we have concluded that Chroma will need some substantial retooling to be the game we want it to be. We remain passionately committed to the high-level vision, and we think there are some very successful mechanics and systems in the existing build. The team has, in fact, already started prototyping new directions for the game based on those successful mechanics. We look forward to sharing more with you down the line, as Chroma evolves in new directions.

As an aside, I also think this kind of shows how ridiculous the "Harmonix shouldn't be doing a Kickstarter" arguments were. I don't imagine most people would use Kickstarter if they could avoid it, and for a company the size of Harmonix it always seemed more a sign of financial trouble, in addition to uncertainty regarding the pertinence, relevance and current value of an old IP. As always, I wish everyone the best who was laid off, and hopefully they can find new work soon.

Chroma isn't canceled from what I have read. It is being "brought back to the drawing board"

I didn't back the Kickstarter because I never really liked Frequency, but if I had done so I would now feel like I had been taken advantage of, especially if anything happened to Drake or Pope. All of the shits I give about Harmonix revolve around those guys.

The success of the Kickstarter is more than likely the only reason they could keep their jobs.

Yes.

Good to know what kind of person you are though.

This just came in from the amplitude kickstarter update:

It's possible that many of you have read the news regarding recent restructuring at Harmonix, which has led to us say goodbye to a number of talented colleagues and folks we consider friends. 

We realize that many of our supporters might have some questions regarding how this might affect Amplitude, and we would like to quickly take the time to address those concerns.  

Thanks to the amazing outpouring of support for the Amplitude project, we were able to reach a Kickstarter goal that would enable us to support the development staff necessary to make the game a reality. 

Simply put, our promise to our backers and fans has not changed, and the Amplitude project remains unaffected.  

We look forward to providing frequent updates on the project starting next week, so stay tuned!

-The Amplitude Development Team

Sounds like the kickstarter may have saved a few jobs.

Harmonix has been a weird company ever since the end of the Dance Central days. They now have multiple titles in various stages of development but none of them even show signs of even providing a release date. They've had Fantasia on the table forever as well as Chroma which has been in Alpha forever, and now they're adding on Amplitude. This layoff sucks but I don't blame the higher ups for raising a few eyebrows, auditing the dev house, and removing some of the less essential staff to increase efficiency.

Is it confirmed that they did?

@foggen: I think JTD is too essential to be let go, if he gets let go it'd because Harmonix is closing or because he killed that girl.

Man, rough day for people in the biz.

Yup Amplitude is one of the things that can keep going. IT stands to reason without the kickstarter there would be no funding and no game, thus no need for that staff. Kickstarter funds pays their wage during the production.

Well that sucks. I really like Harmonix. And Chroma sounded pretty cool.