Following in the wake of similarly upsetting news regarding redundancies at Sony Online Entertainment’s range of in-house studios, THQ has today confirmed that layoffs have hit two of its developers – Kaos Studios and Volition.

16 employees at the Champaign, Illinois-based Volition Inc. have been let go in an effort to “adjust [THQ’s] workforce to fit the studio’s current needs, which is a relatively common occurrence in the game development industry.”

Volition is responsible for the Saints Row and Red Faction franchises, and is currently working on new entries to both series in the form of Saints Row: The Third and Red Faction: Armageddon. As development on Red Faction ramps down towards the game’s May/June release, however, “the studio’s needs” seems to favour fewer employees.

Volition is also currently working on inSANE, a game being created in collaboration with acclaimed film director Guillermo Del Toro.

According to Gamasutra, 220 employees are still at Volition and a THQ representative told the site that “[t]he changes are not expected to affect any current or future titles in development with Volition.”

An additional 17 employees have been let go from another of THQ’s development houses, Kaos Studios (Homefront), while a “dedicated team” of 70 employees remain at the studio “that will continue to support Homefront with an ongoing, robust DLC and content plan, as well as [work] on pre-production for future games.”

THQ’s statement continued:

“We have made changes to ensure that the team size aligns to the current stages of internal product development.”

Source: Gamasutra