Unfortunately, the trend of mass layoffs in the game industry in the first few months of 2024 keeps happening. Today, Austin, Texas-based developer Certain Affinity, which has helped to create content for many games in the Halo and Call of Duty series, among others, revealed it has cut 25 jobs.
The company"s official website stated that it has over 250 team members, which means these cuts cover about 10 percent of its workforce.
In an honest and sobering message on its site, Certain Affinity"s CEO Max Hoberman stated most of the people who were affected were part of the studio"s business operations. He added that this was the first time the studio had laid off team members in its long 17 year history.
Hoberman said that the main reason for these layoffs is, to no one"s surprise, the current economic state of the game industry. He said:
Most significant is an industry-wide slow down in the funding of new lead and co-development projects and the reluctance of third party investors to fund games or game companies. This has made it exceptionally difficult to sign new work or secure other forms of funding.
This sounds a lot like what Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer stated in an interview posted earlier this week. Spencer said that at the moment, the game industry is just not growing in terms of adding new gamers.
Certain Affinity does have at least a couple of projects in the works. One is that it is co-developing Exodus, an upcoming original sci-fi action RPG with Archetype Entertainment, another Austin-based developer. In addition, Certain Affinity has been working on an original first-person shooter game with the code name Project Loro.
In January, rumors hit the internet that a battle royale game set in the Halo universe, which was reportedly being created by Certain Affinity, had been canceled by Microsoft. Neither Microsoft nor Certain Affinity have confirmed this rumor.