Magic: Legends' Shutdown Puts Over 40 Out Of Work

By Jason Winter, News Editor June 30, 2021

Yesterday's surprising news that Magic: Legends would be shutting down in just a few months means that Cryptic Studios will soon have a lot of positions that are no longer necessary. And this is one unfortunate case where "soon" for a gaming company means "right now."

As MassivelyOP noticed, Senior Sound Designer Aaron Walz Tweeted out that "They laid off 44 employees this morning," while saying that "The rest of the audio dept is safe because they don’t work on Magic. I was in charge of Magic and on that team, so sadly, my position was eliminated."

He also noted that Cryptic handled the matter "very professionally and caringly" and that "Our CEO was extremely emotional and choked up."

It's that last part that raises an eyebrow for me. For Walz's part, I thought the sound of the game was fine. I'd imagine that most of the other people who were laid off worked in similar roles, whether it be on the graphics for the game, the engine, community management, or so on. They did their jobs to the best of their ability, working as they were directed by their superiors.

Those higher-ups, though? The ones who made the decisions about the direction of the game that their employees carried out and that proved unpopular enough with fans for it to be shut down just a few months into beta? They usually survive this kind of bloodletting. If the "emotional and choked up" CEO doesn't want to be in that situation again, those are the people who need to be replaced.

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In this article: Cryptic Studios, Perfect World Entertainment, Magic: Legends.

About the Author

Jason Winter, News Editor
Jason Winter is a veteran gaming journalist, he brings a wide range of experience to MMOBomb, including two years with Beckett Media where he served as the editor of the leading gaming magazine Massive Online Gamer. He has also written professionally for several gaming websites.

Arkanpher 6 months ago

"Yesterday’s surprising news"
really? surprising??????????????????
It was obvious to be trash when they first teased the game..then launch proved it even more...and it was matter of weeks to me before they cancel it...yare yare

View 1 reply

Brenner W Pieszak 6 months ago

How do you think they got into position of choice?

This clown concept lately of anyone who makes more money than you is a bad person needs to go. You sound jealous and uneducated.

Lain 6 months ago

Can not say I did not see this coming, I quit n uninstalled that game after single day for it had nothing good about it. Art style was not offensive and sound either, but when it came to fun(loot, combat, pvp, crafting, progression, social interaction) it just had nothing to offer. Even very old games where you can not tell tree from your character like diablo 2 completely beat it when it comes to actual gameplay and rewards. It was also as much of mmo as diablo was, there was nothing massive about this game. The most massive thing was people blocking teleport button... because someone had this great idea for players to have priority over teleport on the map.

Add generic story with "go there 50000km and now go back and go 40000km again and go back..." being all the quests there are just did not help.

But this was not like "worst game ever" bad, it was just "5/10 bad"
While phantasy star online new genesis is more of 2/10 bad

So if i was in prison camp where the punishment is to play meh game, i'd pick this over many other games. Ofcourse people that got fired had nothing to do with the failure of this.

Check Veloren guys= mmorpg, open source, free, daily updates the most fun mmorpg i've played in last year or two and it is still pre-alpha.

peepeepoopoo 6 months ago

As usual the guys who smack the ship into the iceberg survive, the guys that kept trying to scoop out the water get kicked into the cold ocean. And then they'll wonder why the patterns kept repeating over and over again.

Ebin.