Layoffs at Netherock as EA pulls GBA MOH sequel
Medal of Honor GBA team made redundant as sequel fails to materialise
UK development studio Netherock has been forced to lay off one of its GBA teams following a decision by Electronic Arts not to pursue the option to develop a sequel to their previous project.
The team had finished work on Medal of Honor: Infiltrator for the GBA, but when EA decided not to develop a sequel to the title with Netherock, there was no other project for the team to move onto.
"We were doing Medal of Honor: Infiltrator for EA, which we'd finished, and they had us signed up to do a sequel," company founder Fergus McGovern explained to UK website C&VG today. "But EA has now informed us that for whatever reason it is not going to progress with a sequel. We don't have an alternative project to put the team onto, so we've had to let those guys we can't transfer onto other projects go, unfortunately."
It's thought that the Infiltrator team represent a significant percentage of Netherock's total staff, but the company itself is in no trouble according to McGovern, and has four other projects in the works at the moment.
Netherock is made up mostly of former employees of McGovern's previous company HotGen, which went into liquidation in July of this year.