Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread developer Bossa Studios has announced it will lay off an undisclosed number of employees, and that it will restructure its operations to focus on smaller projects.
In a LinkedIn post (spotted by Game Developer), Bossa co-CEO Henrique Olifiers says that the "disruption" brought to the games industry in the past couple of years has seen "treasured studios, teams, and games being shut down or significantly scaled back".
Olifiers calls this a "fundamental transformation" of the industry and says that Bossa isn't immune to it; his studio has made the "painful decision" to scale itself back, which means "saying very difficult goodbyes to extremely talented and treasured colleagues", although he doesn't say how many or in which areas of the studio.
Olifiers goes on to say that Bossa will be focusing on the upcoming launch of open-world survival-crafter Lost Skies, which is currently in "late-stage production". The game does not yet have a release date.
He says that once Lost Skies is out and "enjoying live operations", Bossa will "reshape into small teams working independently on novel game ideas", with a view to releasing those games "as early as possible".
In closing, Olifiers says he and his team wish they had "found a way of navigating [industry] turmoil without resorting to the decision of scaling back [their] teams", but that they "failed" to do so.
This isn't the first time in the last year or so that Bossa has laid off employees. Back in January, the studio said that it had laid off around a third of its workforce, with Olifiers putting those layoffs down to increasing costs, delayed funding, and the troubles faced by smaller games in the market.
Bossa Studios is the latest in a long line of developers and publishers to be hit by layoffs and downsizing efforts. In recent weeks, we've seen the likes of Oxenfree studio Night School and Killer Instinct developer Iron Galaxy reducing staff.
It's not just smaller studios, either; NetEase recently laid off the entire team responsible for developing Marvel Rivals in Seattle, despite the fact that the game had 40 million (admittedly not necessarily active) players at last count.
