Twenty staff made redundant in Relentless restructure
But Brighton developer also recruiting for new projects
Relentless Software made around twenty redundancies two weeks ago, GamesIndustry.biz understands, as part of a restructuring process to adapt to the company's new multi-platform focus, but did not announce the losses formally until today.
However, the developer is also recruiting for new roles for new projects, re-prioritising skillsets more applicable to the studio's future.
"We have recently restructured the company to work on a variety of different projects and different platforms," director and co-founder Andrew Eades told GamesIndustry.biz.
"That has meant some redundancies as we need to match our skillset with the requirements of the projects that we are working on today. We will be recruiting for a number of roles to fulfil the needs of new projects."
At the beginning of this year, Relentless announced that its formal exclusivity partnership with Sony had ended amicably, leaving the company free to pursue a new, digitally focused, multi-platform approach. In a January interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Eades explained those decisions.
"Our real strategy going forward is to change the company from a disc-based, console games company only - which is what we were, we were only PlayStation 3, we were only console, we were only quiz, in fact. We wanted to change the company to have much more breadth and embrace the new digital platforms we saw coming in," said Eades.
"We'd already started that, in a way, with Blue Toad Murder Files which we released in the back end of 2009. That was more than an experiment - how do we become a self-publishing developer?
"We've just launched it on PC. We were really proud that we've come on to Steam and other digital distribution platforms - we think that the future is not a massively expensive console in your living room, necessarily. PlayStation 3 prices are going to come down, Xbox 360 prices are going to come down. Who knows what Nintendo are going to do with the Wii.
"We also know that, come 2012, there are going to be other devices - maybe Apple TV, maybe Google TV, maybe even your Samsung connected TV will be able to play some decent connected games. Who knows?"