Staff cuts at three of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment’s Seattle-based game development studios have been confirmed, as Monolith (FEAR), Snowblind Studios (Death Tank) and Surreal Software (The Suffering) are affected by reductions, which have been explained as efforts towards consolidation.

An unspecified number of employees from each of the studios have been let go, while Warner Bros. would not comment on what affect these reductions would have on games currently in development.

The publisher released the following statement in relation to the recent round of layoffs:

“We are committed to growing Warner Bros. in the game space and will be retaining robust teams in our Seattle studios. We have been moving towards sharing certain resources across the studios and have also been reallocating resources to align talent with our development needs.

“Unfortunately, we had a few too many resources in certain functions and some positions were eliminated in this process. Our plan is to continually review staffing needs and as future projects evolve we would expect to see the studios grow.”

Warner Bros. has become rather aggressive in recent years with regards to their expansion into the realm of videogames publishing and development, having acquired Monolith, TT Games (Traveller’s Tales), Snowblind, Surreal Software, Midway Games Chicago (now WB Games Chicago) and a chunk of Midway’s assets and intellectual property (including Mortal Kombat, Joust and Spy Hunter) in the space of five years.

From 2006 to 2008, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment also held major shares in Sci Entertainment/Eidos, until that company’s acquisition by Square Enix.

So these layoffs at Monolith, Surreal and Snowblind clearly don’t point to any hesitation on the part of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment as far as the videogame business is concerned, but rather a consolidation, as stated.

Still, it doesn’t make it any easier to swallow for those who lost their jobs – all the best to you for the future.

Source: Gamasutra