Star Citizen: Early Details on Now Revealed "Restructures", Estimated 150-200 Affected | [FINAL UPDATE]
Tightening the belt.
It’s no secret that 2023 was quite a turbulent year for the Star Citizen crowdfunding project, with a significant portion heavily affected by a lull in consumer interest in both attention - and in the context of this post - financial support. However, towards the end of the year Cloud Imperium Games seemingly managed to stabilize indicated by data from their public funding tracker. According to CEO Chris Roberts in privately validated internal communications, this had indeed been a ‘record breaking year’ for the company; However, some sources within the company suggested a potential financial “deficit”. Those who had witnessed and/or been affected feared that this potentially dire outlook for the company had prompted - what some rumored internal messaging had described - a “relocation effort”.
Several additional sources detailed a contract requiring 6 months of silence in exchange for their severance packages. Notable CIG staff affected reportedly included key leadership for the PU, causing major shakeups in structure. Comments made mainly expressed fears that both ATX and LA studios would soon close.
In a conversation with a company representative, we had come to the topic of possible layoffs and/or office closures. The rep had made sure to indicate that neither office had planned to close. In response to claims that Cloud Imperium Games’ job hiring site had been cleared of all but one US job posting (which some speculated hinted at a potential freeze), they indicated that more were incoming. When asking about rumors (from both public and private discussions) detailing a possible “reduction in operation” of the Austin studio, the representative dismissed them entirely. In a comment about the Austin studio, they mentioned the following:
Austin is our publishing and live ops hub. It's literally the building where our physical servers are, the entire platform, release management, Live QA, Live Service Backend team.
ATX is the backbone of data distribution throughout our company globally, both in delivering builds to devs so they can work, but also in releasing patches to the community.
We're certainly not going anywhere. 😄
When asked about concerns regarding the LA studio, a similar but brief affirmation was given on its continued standard operation.
UPDATE 2.18.24:
Further conversations with sources indicate that US members were offered to move into the Manchester office with significant pay reduction. Additional conversations had described non-disparagement clauses that had been required to receive severance packages. They also indicate that recent events more heavily affected the Los Angeles studio, with some stating that only a small amount of QA staff remain.
UPDATE 6.7.24:
Conversations with community members who monitor publicly available information, such as social media and job postings, suggest that 150-200 staff members have been affected by now publicly revealed “restructuring”. This aligns with information from non-public sources, which were compared to the previous publicly stated number of approximately 1100. This will be the final update on these events, as recent hiring indicates that numbers have potentially stabilized.
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