Giant Bomb Video Game News

Well, it wasn't too hard to guess that Midway would eventually be seeing some cuts as the economy gets weirder and weirder. This morning, the company issued a release stating that 25 percent (or around 180 individuals) of the company's worldwide staff. Some games that were previously scheduled for release in 2010 and 2011 have been "suspended." These are listed as "non-core" projects that were never publicly announced, which I take to mean as "we'll keep making Mortal Kombat games." I'd also imagine that the TNA Impact! sequel will still be trucking along, and it's hard to imagine them canning This Is Vegas after so much work (and money) has already been sunk into it. Additionally, Surreal Software--the Midway-owned developer doing This Is Vegas up in Seattle, wasn't mentioned as a location that would see cuts. Nor was the Newcastle studio in the UK. But it's getting harder and harder to determine what Midway views as "core" these days, so I'm just sort of trying to fill in a few of the blanks.

While the layoffs will cross multiple departments, the Austin studio is taking the brunt of the blow, as it's being shut down completely. This was the studio that was working on the already-canceled "Criminal" project, and it sounds like the studio had become a skeleton crew working on tech for the other teams and perhaps working on some of these now-suspended games for 2010-11. Chicago and San Diego have also seen cuts of some kind.

Matt Booty, Midway's CEO, had this to say on the issue:

In other layoff news, Edge is reporting that 37 people have been let go over at Factor 5. This is said to be around 50 percent of the company's workforce. You may remember that an employee--now a former employee--named Sam Baker posted on his personal blog that employees weren't getting paid on time and that health benefits for employees had been cut. According to Edge's source, Factor 5 is considering legal action against Baker, who has resigned in the wake of all this.

Factor 5 hasn't issued any official comment on the matter.