Crowfall Dev ArtCraft Confirms Layoffs

The developer of recently launched MMORPG Crowfall has confirmed a round of layoffs that were making the rounds on social media earlier this week. ArtCraft co-founder Gordon Walton wrote yesterday on the game's website that "we lost some teammates as we shifted from launch mode to a live service operation."

The use of "we lost" raises my eyebrows and makes it sound like the (former) employees were accidentally misplaced and might be found again, like temporarily lost car keys, but at least Walton followed up that statement by saying that ArtCraft will work with them to "identify new positions for them as quickly as possible."

Less generous in his assessment of the situation was a developer that Massively Opinionated found on Twitter, who blamed "a lack of marketing" for the layoffs and said "[T]he guys that made the game are not on the game anymore." Crowfall was initially Kickstarted in 2015 but suffered multiple delays and other setbacks before its full launch in July.

If you're still interested in the game -- and judging by some player-count estimates, not too many of you are -- then you might enjoy the rest of Walton's post, which talks about Global Conflict month, which has all players "fighting in a larger universe offering unlimited global access to all world zones--EU, Australia, US East, and West--with schedules to match." If that doesn't sound like "we don't have enough players per region so we'll let you play in any region to make sure there are enough players," then I don't know what does.