Big staff cuts at yet another UK developer

Eurocom, an independent UK games developer, responsible for such arcade ports as Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Hydro Thunder, Rodland, Mortal Kombat 3 and Mortal Kombat 4 had to lay off  ¾ of their workforce yesterday.

A statement issued by studio Director Hugh Binns to Gamesindustry International reads:

 "Eurocom are undertaking a restructuring which I regret to say has meant we've made the majority of our workforce redundant today. 

 "This includes many very experienced, talented and highly skilled employees, and we'd like to thank them all for your hard work and efforts. 

 "We've fought to try and save as many jobs as possible, but the steep decline in demand for console games, culminating in a number of console projects falling through in the last week, left us with no option. Eurocom has retained a core staff of just under 50 employees and will be focusing mainly on mobile opportunities moving forward."

Obviously, developers go under all the time, but I mention Eurocom's difficulties because until a few months ago, I worked there and the 3 ½ years I was there were some of the hardest, most humbling and also most interesting years of my working life. There's not many jobs where people wander around the building in shorts and bare feet or have racks full of machine guns in the offices or (my favourite) let their staff install games on their incredibly powerful workstation computers and permit building-wide games of Left 4 Dead, Battlefield and Star Craft 2 at lunch time. There's also very few jobs where 80-100 hour weeks are par for the course coming up to a deadline, but that's the dark truth about the games industry.

Hopefully they can transform their business model and survive the current turmoil in the industry, but it's still such a same so much talent is now out of work. My heart goes out to all of you guys.

UPDMTWE (7/12/12): Despite the best efforts of the directors to move into markets that might keep them afloat, the company announced today that they were bringing the administrators in, so that's it, all over.