UPDATE: Playtonic has officially confirmed they have made ‘the incredibly heartbreaking decision to say goodbye to some truly brilliant members of the Playtonic team.” You can read their full statement below. The original article follows.
There’s some unfortunate news surrounding UK developer and publisher Playtonic Games.
As reported by NintendoLife, Playtonic seems to have had redundancies across the company. They found several former and current employees revealing that their jobs were made redundant or at risk of redundancy. Playtonic has yet to make an official announcement, or to confirm how many were affected.
As a small aside, it seems that UK laws have different definitions for layoffs and redundancies than we use in informal English, in the US or the rest of the world. Based on what former employees are sharing, it seems at least some of them are choosing a voluntary redundancy, AKA, they’re leaving the company voluntarily after being asked.
Founded in 2014 by several former members of Rare, Playtonic was launched so that they could return to the 3D collect-a-thon platformer genre with a spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie, called Yooka-Laylee. Playtonic would go on to make a 2D platformer sequel, called Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair, as well as become publisher for several other UK games, including Demon Turf, Lil Gator Game, and BPM: Bullets Per Minute.
Just two months ago, Playtonic announced their plan to build a new version of Yooka-Laylee from the ground up for newer platforms, called Yooka-Replaylee. They also got caught up in wanting to announce the game for the Switch 2, but just not being able to do so before Nintendo’s announcement.
While Yooka-Laylee didn’t meet everyone’s expectations, Playtonic was able to hold onto their reputations with conviction and a lot of goodwill. It didn’t hurt that they more or less discovered Fabraz and helped put his name on the map by publishing his game Demon Turf.
This year, Playtonic just announced Dunk Dunk, and is set to release Fabraz’ next title, Demon Tides. They were also planning to release Cattle Country and Yooka-Replaylee next year. With so much to look forward to, and seemingly no lack of work to go around, today’s news hits quite hard.
Playtonic does have an obligation to explain the situation to the public, if not legal, at least for the sake of their fandom and reputation. Their fans will definitely want to know if the studio has let go of most or a large number of their staff. Subsequently, they’s also look for reassurances if they can still publish Yooka-Replaylee, or even just Demon Tides, in the future.
We wish the best for everyone at Playtonic who is no longer with the company, regardless of the specific circumstances of their exit. We hope that those who want to return to gaming can find placement back in the video game industry.
