40 laid off at GPG, Kickstarter in jeopardy
Things aren’t going too well for Gas Powered Games. Earlier this week the company launched a $1.1 million Kickstarter for its next game, Wildman, but it seems now that almost all staff from the studio has been let go.
After five days, the Kickstarter is now at just over $200k and GPG CEO Chris Taylor has updated the project with a video asking people whether or not he should keep the kickstarter going, knowing that the team has been released.
He explains that if he were to keep the Kickstarter going and it fails, he would have to close the company, let everyone go without paid time off or severance package, and that’s a thing he didn’t want to do. So instead, 40 developers have now been let go and it’s up to “the people” to decide whether or not the kickstarter continues with the possibility that if it’s succesful and those workers haven’t found other jobs and are willing to come back to Gas Powered Games, they will be rehired.
It seems as if the Wildman Kickstarter is the last hope for Gas Powered Games, which in the past created games like Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander and Dungeon Keeper. With most of its workforce being laid off, one can easily wonder that the studio will close shop anyway if the kickstarter doesn’t get funded. Or – if we think of it in a very bad way – Gas Powered Games can be seen as blackmailing the public into funding the kickstarter. In either case, a very bad situation indeed.
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