Bossa Games, the developer of Surgeon Simulator, I’m Bread, and I’m Fish, is shedding an undisclosed variety of staff because it strikes to “reduce” its growth efforts with a view to give attention to the upcoming launch of the open world co-op journey Lost Skies.
Bossa co-founder and co-CEO Henrique Olifiers acknowledged the “important quantity of disruption” that is wracked the videogame trade over the previous few years in a message posted on LinkedIn. He would not imagine it is a “part” the enterprise goes by, however relatively “a elementary transformation of the video games trade, a reshape of how video games are made and by what sorts of groups.”
“The trade of two years sooner or later won’t appear like the trade of two years in the past,” Olifiers wrote, a prediction of ongoing seismic change that can apparently impression how Bossa develops video games sooner or later.
“We’ve needed to make the painful choice to reduce, specializing in the late-stage manufacturing of Lost Skies and its upcoming launch, guaranteeing the sport is efficiently launched and developed for its gamers for the foreseeable future,” Olifiers wrote in a message posted on LinkedIn. “Once Lost Skies is established and having fun with reside operations, we’ll reshape into small groups working independently on novel recreation concepts delivered to the gamers as early as attainable.
“This means saying very tough goodbyes to extraordinarily gifted and treasured colleagues, really among the greatest folks within the video games trade, who’ve been a part of our journey for a very long time. We want we had discovered a means of navigating this turmoil with out resorting to the choice of scaling again our groups, however sadly we have failed on this endeavor.”
There’s no indication of a connection in Olifiers’ message, however NetEase acquired a minority stake in Bossa in 2019 with an funding reportedly of as much as $30 million. NetEase lately ended funding of the Worlds Untold and Jar of Sparks studios and laid off builders engaged on Marvel Rivals at its Seattle-based studio, and is reportedly seeking to make even additional cuts sooner or later.
1This is the second spherical of layoffs imposed by Bossa: At the top of 2023, the studio laid off roughly one-third of its staff in what Olifiers known as “an ideal storm of occasions,” together with a lot of big-budget video games launched close to the top of that yr, elevated working prices, and delayed funding for brand new video games.
But the studio’s issues have clearly endured, and now it appears to be banking large on Lost Skies, which was introduced in 2023 as a type of second run at Worlds Adrift, a physics-based multiplayer recreation first revealed in 2014. Work on that recreation led to 2019 after two years of early entry, as Bossa stated it hadn’t “reached the extent of recognition it must proceed.” Olifiers did not speculate on what’s going to occur if Lost Skies meets the identical destiny, however I think about it will not be good for Bossa.
