Orcs Must Die: Unchained Studio Lays Off 30 People, Cancels Future Game

If you’ve heard of Robot Entertainment, you’re a minority in the gaming world, as at one time they were doing pretty good for themselves, releasing both Orcs Must Die and Orcs Must Die 2 for consoles and PC. Both titles received critical acclaim and a good amount of success - about as much as you could hope for a small studio making small games. But then they decided to dip their hands into the free-to-play market with Orcs Must Die Unchained, and while I consider myself a fan, most players didn’t appreciate the shift in style. Almost a million fewer people played Unchained compared to Orcs Must Die 2, and now the studio is looking to recuperate the losses.

That means, unfortunately, that the company is reducing its workload by canceling one of the two upcoming games they had been working on, so they can focus all their efforts on the one that remains. But since less work means there’s less to do, ultimately 30 people have been dismissed from the studio. Far from the biggest layoff we’ve seen in the industry, but for a small studio like that, it’s a fairly significant chunk of their workforce.

"Unfortunately, that means we need to resize our team to fit only one project. We’ve made the very difficult decision to let go of over 30 of our very talented and dedicated developers. The coming days will be difficult as we say goodbye to friends and colleagues. We are grateful to have had the opportunity to work with them all."

As for the new game that looks to “rescue” the studio following the less-than-stellar success of Orcs Must Die Unchained, we don’t know anything about it, other than Robot promising it would be released “soon.” If it’s another proper entry into the series that put them on the map or something else entirely… We’ll have to see.

Best of luck to those laid off.