Romero's MMO gets downsized

By Oli Welsh Published 19 October, 2009

Staff laid off by owner Gazillion.

The MMO being developed by Slipgate Ironworks, the studio founded by id Software alumnus John Romero, is "changing shape" after job cuts at the developer.

The decision comes from ambitious new MMO publisher Gazillion, which announced its acquisition of Slipgate alongside NetDevil and others last year. At the time, it said that Slipgate Ironworks was working on an original game.

"As part of our focus on reaching the widest possible audiences with breakthrough MMO entertainment, we decided to change the format of our project at Slipgate Ironworks to better achieve this aim," Gazillion said in a statement published by Gamasutra.

"The game we'll launch will build on the efforts to date with a smaller core team and the other Slipgate staff are already in discussions around the many open positions across our slate of projects. "

Well-connected Kotaku reckons around 50 staff have been let go.

Virtually nothing was known of the game, other than that it was using the BigWorld MMO engine. Romero first mentioned the project back in 2006.

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About Oli Welsh

Oli is Eurogamer's acting deputy editor and reviews editor and likes to take things one word at a time. He is among the best dressed people in South London.

Read more articles from Oli by visiting the Oli Welsh archive page.

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