Following the launch of its debut title, Invincible VS, developer Quarter Up has been hit by layoffs. A former senior gameplay engineer, Daniel Hogberg, wrote on LinkedIn that he was laid off “along with most of the rest of my team a couple of weeks ago.”
Former gameplay engineer Daniel Schlesinger posted something similar, noting that “alongside many others, I was laid off last week from Skybound Entertainment and the Quarter Up team.” However, it seems the overall impact is allegedly more severe than what’s publicly known. An anonymous employee speaking to This Week in Videogames claimed that “something like 75% of Quarter Up was laid off” last month.
They also alleged that about 35 employees of a 50-member team were gone. Another source claimed that layoffs actually began in June, with four employees let go, which was then followed by another 29 in July.
If that sounds all over the place, that’s apparently the case, according to one source. They also believed that only a “skeleton crew” was left for support “through the first wave of DLC” (featuring Universa and the Immortal as new characters). Nothing was said about the second wave, so it’s possible that further layoffs could ensue as Quarter Up winds down work.
As for the reason behind these redundancies, a former employee says, “The assumption is that Invincible VS didn’t perform to what [Quarter Up] expected, and, unfortunately, they didn’t have the budget to keep people around.” Unfortunately, it seems any plans for long-term support remain up in the air, despite the studio seemingly desiring to.
Skybound Games, of which Quarter Up is an internal studio, didn’t comment on the layoffs or what’s to come from the studio, although a source noted that they may “go back to the drawing board.” We’ll have to wait and see what that looks like, so stay tuned for more details.
