They’re calling the move “strategic changes for future growth”
Image credit:Behaviour Interactive
Image credit:Behaviour Interactive
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Behaviour’sannouncement- the opening of which ominously dubs the studio as “The Company” in true killer-like fashion - confirmed that they will look to cut up to 95 staff. Of those almost 100 devs, the majority will be laid off from the developers’ Montreal studio.
In true corpospeak, the announcement euphemistically dubbed the firing of dozens of people as “strategic changes for future growth”, citing a “challenging period for the games industry” amid “unprecedented competition” as part of thinking behind the move. The studio also noted that their headcount has more than doubled from just shy of 600 employees to 1,300 staff in the last five years, in what seems to be a sadly continuing trend of games companies having richly gorged themselves during the at-home pandemic boom - Behaviour calls it “remarkable growth” - only to forcibly vomit up their blameless workers as things then contract due to the lightening of lockdowns and the subsequent cost-of-living crisis.
Behaviour say that the “multiple strategic changes to its corporate structure” - i.e. putting dozens upon dozens of people out of a job - will help “ improv[e] the distinction between its product, production, business development, and marketing resources” as the studio double down on their “historical strengths” of horror and development services, along with a possible expansion into whatever “location-based entertainment” means.
The latest layoffs at Behaviour come fewer than six months afterclose to 50 staff were cut at the start of the year, meaning around 10% of the studio have been dropped in 2024 so far. Behaviour are far from the only studio to be part ofthe unrelenting barrage of job losses across the games industry over the last year or so, with thousands of staff losing their jobs at developers, publishers and more. Hard to match that level of fear and wanton destruction with someone in a pig mask, honestly.
