UK game developer Bossa Studios has cut their staff by 1/3rds.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, that amounts to 19 former employees. Bossa Studios co-founder Henrique Olifier shared this statement:
“…we had to make the difficult decision to reshape the studio to reflect the position we find ourselves in at the end of this year, focusing all our efforts now on Lost Skies.
This means we find ourselves in the heartbreaking position of having to let roughly one third of the studio go – amongst them, some of our closest colleagues.
While we are doing our utmost to support them, we would appreciate any help our industry peers can give in spreading the word about these great people – or even better, hiring them as part of your team.
You’ll be hard-pressed to find a better game development professional than one of these Bossians, whom we’ll vouch for without hesitation.
We often say that making games is hard, but nothing is harder than seeing people you admire being let go. Ultimately, we tried our very best to avoid being in this position, and we’re truly sorry for where we have landed.”
There are no easy scapegoats to blame for this situation. There are no overly ambitious bosses or greedy investors who forced the company to fail and have to fire employees. Olifier referred to the situation as a “perfect storm of events.” What Olifier points to is that the high number of AAA releases that came out in September 2023 made it difficult for Bossa to secure funding for their own games.
Bossa has been around since 2010 and got their start making a Facebook game called Monstermind, if you had forgotten that that was a thing. Their recent rise to success comes from the virality of their games I Am Bread, Surgeon Simulator, and Surgeon Simulator 2, all physics based games with a humorous bent to them.
These games were perfect fodder for video game streamers, and turned them from cult favorites to one of the more well-known small / independent game studios. You can see this trailer for Surgeon Simulator 2 on the official Xbox channel as an indication of that success.
As mentioned above, the studio is currently working on Lost Skies, a “cooperative survival adventure for 1–6 players set amongst the clouds.” They have found Humble Games as a publisher, but from their announcement trailer alone one can see this is a huge departure, and risk, for the studio. The title has no set release date.
GameRanx wishes the former employees of Bossa well and hope they can find work back in the industry.
