[UPDATE]: Capcom Vancouver says 20 employees let go due to "unsuitable fit with the studio goals," says it's still hiring.
The studio behind Dead Rising 2 has confirmed a round of layoffs today. According to the official Twitter feed of Capcom Vancouver, the studio has cut its headcount by 7 percent "as a result of unsuitable fit with the studio goals."
In a follow-up post, the studio emphasized that it is "still growing and aggressively seeking great talent." Its official website lists senior positions for an animator, a producer, and a designer, as well as a handful of software engineer openings.
The studio's current game has not been announced, but it is intended to be the start of a new franchise, and won't feature zombies. Previously, the studio developed Dead Rising 2, Dead Rising 2: Off the Record, and the Dead Rising 2: Case Zero and Dead Rising 2: Case West downloadable spin-offs of the series. Before its association with Capcom started, the Vancouver studio was known as Blue Castle, specializing in baseball games like Take-Two's The Bigs and its sequel.
The news worsens a particularly difficult stretch for the Vancouver development scene. Last month, Activision effectively shut down Prototype 2 developer Radical Entertainment just two months after its latest release topped the US best-seller charts. Earlier this month, Take-Two unveiled plans to relocate Rockstar Vancouver--fresh off the launch of Max Payne 3--across the country and merge it with the Rockstar team in Toronto.
[UPDATE]: A Capcom representative provided the following statement for GameSpot: "Capcom Vancouver has laid off 20 staff as part of its regular periodic assessment of overall studio goals. The studio is actively hiring talented staff to support its goal of delivering high quality games."
Given the 7 percent figure stated by Capcom Vancouver, that would have put the studio's pre-layoff size around 285 people.
Brendan Sinclair has been a games journalist since 1999. His tastes are eclectic, though he has a definite affinity for games with arcade roots. He's Canadian, but has also been at home in Atlanta, Austin, Chicago, and San Francisco.
Like i said in a previous comment hopefully this was a just firing, and the statement not a snowstorm to cover their tracks to the real reason, I was hoping to see something on dead rising 3 at e3, maybe this is why, ppl weren't doing their job... who knows...
good game but always worrying about the clock turned me off it i want to relax and kill some zombies not worry about time limits
Had they made save points/checkpoints all along and designed the game better they might be doing better....
Man I would feel like *blank* if I was one of those guys. "Hey thanks a lot!" but yes you gotta do what you gotta do.
Well now I feel bad for having supported them. I wish they could hold it together better in the industry, it seems like if they're not busy trucking out some formulated DLC packages, they're busy going under.
But then, I also bought the DLCs in DR2 and in Off the Record.
3 Like That's what you call a "dynamic work environment"!
Make the company lots of money with your talent, then get booted as a thank you.
Rinse, repeat.
@Sturmfuehrer_ Maybe they actually weren't pulling their weight, and it was a just firing, who knows really, I hope that's what it was, but life isn't always fair... just ask the guys who were fired after making prototype 2...
1 Like Well Its capcom and the creator of dead riseing and lost planet fault. Capcom lie about the dead riseing 3 anyways . I think dead riseing 2 should gone differnet way but too late. Capcom got bring the mega man series back and realse classics or there old games onto psn, xbox acrade and pc to get money. I think lost planet 3 will lose more money from capcom and reboot devil may cry series so capcom could face bankrupht enough said.
@pszone So you think because two games might not sell as much as some other games will cause them to completely go bankrupt? You know very little about how capcom work and the other ways they make money.
1 Like I'll work for them! I'm no genius, but it doesn't take a genius to know that taking away the do-whatever-you-want mode in Dead Rising 2, making NO new Mega Man games, and doing whatever it is they did to Lost Planet 2 were bad ideas.
2 Like Hey, they gotta do what they gotta do. Know what I'm sayin? Hows that for a contribution? Stay tuned for more wildy amazing comments like this one. All of you have just been blessed here.
Capcom managed to drive the Dead Rising franchise to the ground by overmilking Dead Rising 2 with Case West then Off The Record. It's franchise mismanagement that led to these layoffs.
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I don't know if I'd use the word "purge." Lay off people who don't have the skills you need, hire those who do - sounds like simply a good policy.
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@digi-demon You're absolutely right. Unfortunately, that's not the trend, as you mentioned. :(
A good employer values its employees - no matter what the industry.
Shame there are not many good employers around these days as money i$ king.
That's not really true in the game industry.
If you're skills are not up to par for what they're looking for, there is no problem hiring someone else.
Unless they've built a quality working relationship with the team, then they may keep a person but that's simply out of relationship.
It's a professional environment. If a person is lacking skills, they're not inclined to keep them for "training." There's no time for that.
@Gelugon_baat That works for button-pushers and burger-flippers, not professionals. If a company has too many artists and not enough programmers, are they supposed to pay for their artists to go to college for a computer science degree and also keep paying them for four years until they graduate and can finally do something that the company needs?
1 Like I do wanna know what they mean with "usuitable fit with the studio goals" some old employed word maybe.
1 Like "usuitable fit with the studio goals" means they didn't dig all the overpriced, already on disc, content that they were told to create.
@TrueGB Or maybe in the employers mind they were being paid too much when compared with a fresh employee...
[UPDATE]: BioWare Austin cofounder, producer, and vice president Rich Vogel leaves Star Wars MMO team as layoffs at Texas capital city studio continue.
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