At lunchtime today I heard that Nexon (a Korean company that makes online games) closed its studio in Yaletown, Vancouver (which is the area I work in), and laid off 90 employees. There were just told in a meeting that the company was closing and then had to pack and leave! Pretty crazy and sad for them. Of course there have been many lay offs recently in mainstream gaming companies like EA, but this is the first “casual” company that I have heard of which has run into trouble. Of course Nexon still has a studio in the US and the main one in Korea so they haven’t gone bust or anything, they have just “restructured”. But is this an indicator for the casual industry as a whole? Hopefully not.

Klei Entertainment (makers of N+ and Eets) were making a game called Sugar Rush with Nexon so I’m not sure where this leaves them. Hope they are still OK. I’ll try to find out soon…

Well where is the opportunity in all this? (This is what you must always ask yourself when things seem to go wrong). For Big Fish Games, there’s a good opportunity to hire some talented people who understand casual games, and just when we need them. For the employees they will have to think positively and apply themselves to getting new jobs (or starting their own businesses) – it could be a great experience for some of them! I wish them all good luck.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 28th, 2009 at 8:04 am and is filed under Industry News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.