Bad news always seem to come at the end of the week and this time is no exception. Shacknews is reporting through multiple but unnamed sources that there have been between 15 to 25 team members laid off at Dallas based Gearbox Software. The same report also states that development has "halted" on one of their upcoming projects, the Sega published first person shooter Aliens: Colonial Marines (the article doesn't actually say the game has been cancelled).

The report states that part of the reason for the layoffs was due to the poor sales of Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway, the third game in Gearbox's WWII tactical shooter series that was released last September by Ubisoft. However there's no word as to why development has stopped on the Aliens game. Sega first announced the game, and Gearbox's involvement, way back in December 2006 but only recently began to reveal info about the title, starting with a cover story in Game Informer magazine last February. Gearbox also has another game in development, the original first person shooter Borderlands, and also has at least one major unnamed game in the works.

Update: Shacknews's story has been updated with comments from Gearbox head Randy Pitchford who states, "Aliens isn't canned". He also states, "We've made some transformative changes and yes, that's meant some talent changes, but that's not the real story."