Large layoffs reported at Aspyr Media

Posted Dec 9th 2009 6:30PM by John Callaham
Filed under: Biz

Big Download has learned through several unnamed but reliable sources that Austin, Texas based game publisher Aspyr Media has laid off a large amount of its team members a couple of weeks ago. One of our sources estimated that over 50 percent of the workers were let go with only a handful of team members now remaining in the offices.

Aspyr Media began in 1996 as a major Mac game developer and publisher but has expanded over the years to include PC and console titles. This year it released several PC games including a number of titles from Russia-based 1C Company. Last month the publisher released Star Wars The Force Unleashed Ultimate Edition for the PC to retail stores and Dreamkiller as a Steam download exclusive. Most recently the company was responsible for the Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network port of the original Call of Duty game. Big Download has both emailed and called Aspyr Media to get any official comments on their current situation.

Tags: aspyr, aspyr-media, dreamkiller, star-wars-the-force-unleashed

3 Comments

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

I remember Aspyr announcing some layoffs a while back, too - when the economy first started having a downturn.

Being a Mac user and fan, I hate to see this happen to them. The Mac barely has any developers writing decent games for it as it is.

But on the flip side? I have to question what's wrong with management at Aspyr?? It seems like every worthwhile game title they decide to port from Windows to the Mac winds up MONTHS behind schedule on its release. If game developers expect to make a good profit selling Mac games, they need to get their act together and make releases happen as QUICKLY as possible behind their console or PC counterparts! When they wait too long (like they did for Call of Duty 4 and Bioshock), even die-hard Mac users finally get tired of waiting - and buy the game for a console, or settle for the Windows version to play via Boot Camp or on a spare Windows PC.

In the HOME market, Macs have close to 10% market penetration right now, AND they tend to be users with more disposable income than average. There HAS to be some money to be made, being one of the ONLY developers writing native OS X coded games (vs. the emulated garbage companies like EA keep putting out with the "Cider" engine!).

But laying off half your developers, when you've already shown you don't have the manpower to code a decent game in a reasonable time-frame? Sounds like the kiss of death to me!Posted at 12:08PM on Dec 11th 2009 by Tom W

It is sad to see that Aspyr may go by the wayside. Several years ago, they had really ramped up their schedule to bring a huge number of Mac games to the market. But they've slowly been turning away from Mac games, diversifying, and I think that was part of the problem. They lost their core audience and couldn't really pick up a new one because all of their programming was based on porting games to the Mac.

BTW, Bioshock was brought to the Mac by Feral Interactive.Posted at 2:48PM on Dec 11th 2009 by Omaha Sternberg

Aspyr takes too long to do things.... games are way late, they are unsupported, patches not kept up with, killing multiplayer capabilities (like on NWN2) and all kindsa stuff. I can make and use 3rd party "unofficial" Mac ports that are often better than Aspyr's official ones, and just use the Windows versions, which are usually cheaper. Its not good for mac gaming cuz tons of people have no idea there are 3rd party ports and hacks and hundreds of "windows only" games that can play on Macs without having to have Windows, but Aspyr hasn't impressed me with anything in many years.Posted at 5:47PM on Dec 13th 2009 by doh123