midway-austin posts

As we reported Monday, Midway has laid off the majority of its team members at its Austin, Texas based office. However, reports of layoffs at two more Austin based companies have now been denied, according to a report at Edge Online.

The reports came from a web site (which we won't give the pleasure of a link) that cited anonymous sources of plans for massive layoffs at NCSoft's US headquarters in Austin with as many as 150 people planned to be cut. Edge Online said an NCsoft rep stated via an email that such news was "just crazy". The rumor story also initially stated that Vigil Games, the THQ owned developer currently in the middle of two projects (the console action game Darksiders and the Warhammer 40,000 MMO) was also laying off a large number of workers. Those reports were quickly debunked and the story later removed any mention of Vigil Games which of course calls into question the NCsoft part of the story.

Midway's attempts to stay afloat following a constant stream of poor financial results have apparently taken a toll on the company's Austin, Texas based development studio. According to reports from Gamasutra and Kotaku, both citing unnamed sources, the studio laid off a significant portion of their team late last week.

While Gamasutra did not state numbers in their report, Kotaku claims as many as 90 people may have lost their jobs at the developer. Gamasutra's story claims that the reductions will reduce the developer to working on just one team. Midway Austin's last game was the 2007 released first person shooter Blacksite: Area 51, which received poor reviews and generated poor sales.

Update: Midway has now issued a press release confiming the layoffs but adding that the remaining team members will be working on unnamed game prototypes.