Radical, High Moon Get Staff Cut Courtesy of Activision Blizzard
August doesn’t seem like a good month for those in the industry, as, following Midway and NCSoft, Activison Blizzard today announced that it has let go of nearly 100 Radical Entertainment employees, 60 High Moon Studios staffers; the company has also killed off at least two games in development.
The Radical layoffs was confirmed by the studio after word appeared via The Vancouver Sun. The studio is responsible for Prototype, the upcoming open-world action game. High Moon departures was first noted by Gamasutra; the studio recently released Bourne Conspiracy.
“Activision Blizzard is committed to making the best games possible and has elected at this time to reduce the number of titles that Radical is developing from four games to two,” commented Radical human resources VP Leah Rubin. “Therefore, we will be proportionately reducing the size of our studio.”
Radical is also currently working on Crash Banditcoot: Mind Over Mutant; this and the abovementioned games weren’t cancelled. It is being speculated that one of the studio’s cancelled games may have been a sequel to Scarface.