Radical Entertainment staff levels slashed
Nearly half of employees to go.
New giants on the gaming block Activision Blizzard have confirmed that they'll be 'realigning staffing' at Vancouver-based developer Radical Entertainment.
The number of titles in development has been officially reduced to two: Prototype and Crash Bandicoot.
The studio, which produced Scarface: The World is Yours and Crash of the Titans, was due to produce a sequel to the third-person mob title, but Scarface 2 disappeared from the list of titles being carried over to a sequel.
Variety's Cut Scene blog says Scarface 2 is the latest on the list of terminated titles, or at least titles now floating free of a publisher - a list that already includes Ghostbusters and Tim Schaeffer's Brutal Legend.
The aforementioned staff cuts were announced by Activision Blizzard in a 29th July statement, picked up by the Vancouver Sun yesterday.
Radical's management, in the shape of Leah Rubin, responded in an email. "Activision Blizzard is committed to making the best games possible and has elected at this time to reduce the number of titles that Radical is developing from four games to two...Therefore, we will be proportionately reducing the size of our studio."
The news follows yesterday's cuts at fellow Activision Blizzard satellite studio High Moon, as reported by Gamasutra. The parent company's official line is that "the company intends to adapt the Vivendi Games' studio operations to better align the studio structure against the new product slate." Which is a nice way of saying shape up, or ship out.