Dune: Awakening developer Funcom has announced it’s laying off staff today as part of a restructuring process across the studio, with an undisclosed number of staff losing their jobs.
In a statement to GamesIndustry.biz, the Norway-based developer stated it’s laying off staff as part of a restructuring effort towards: “releasing new content, features, and enhancements.”
The statement continues: “The transition from development to long-term live operation, while also building towards a major console release next year, will require us to restructure our teams and focus our resources from across projects and studios. Unfortunately, this also means having to say goodbye to cherished colleagues.
“This difficult process is starting now, and we cannot yet determine the exact impact. We are working to find new opportunities for those affected.
“Our focus now is to provide these team members with the support and guidance they need, and we ask for your understanding at this time as we will not make further comments during this process.”
Dune: Awakening, as mentioned both in the statement and widely reported, was a massive success for Funcom. The game had a Steam concurrent player count of roughly 190,000 players during its launch, with around 100,000 coming from a more expensive priority access version of the game. In recent months, the game is floating around roughly 20,000 concurrent daily players.
Funcom, a studio with ample history in both the MMO and survival game genres, had plans to continue supporting the game post-launch and recently rolled out its first major free update to the game. This, unfortunately, was not enough to stave off layoffs.
