A significant portion of Machinima.com's staff was laid off earlier today. The word first came directly from the former employee themselves, via Twitter.
Justin Fassino, for example, tweeted:
"Effective immediately I am no longer at Machinima. Would love to send an official email with my contact info but they took my computer."
According to Joystiq, of the company's 200 staff, 23 in total were let go, who all hail from programming and production (editorial). According to Machinima Editor-in-Chief Rob Smith:
"This is growing pains. Machinima has grown a lot in a short amount of time. We had to look at the business, look at where we're focusing," Smith told us. "It has hit the editorial group, but we are still doing editorial coverage in a slightly different way."
Machinima later released its own statement:
"Today Machinima underwent a reorganization to address its global growth, and this process unfortunately resulted in layoffs. Less than 10% of Machinima's workforce was effected. Also as part of the restructure Machinima is hiring across key divisions including Sales, Marketing and Product."
It's worth pointing out that 23 out of 200 is more than 10%. More like eleven and a half percent.