Day 1 Studios Lose 95% Of Staff

According to a report on Gamasutra, Day 1 Studios – the developers of F.E.A.R.3, have had to axe 95% of their workforce. The Day 1 Studios website states that the company had over 140 employees.

Apparently, the team have lost a deal with Konami and were working on an unannounced reboot of the Silent Scope franchise. The last game, Silent Scope 3, was published on the PlayStation 2.

As always, our thoughts are with those who have lost their jobs.

Update: As pointed out in our comments, the 95 per cent job losses were from the team working on the Silent Scope reboot. This information came from the original source, traced back through Gamasutra to Gamespot but has since been corrected. Day 1 has another, significantly smaller team who were not affected. Sorry for the confusion.

Source: Gamasutra

9 Comments

  1. They had over 140, dropped by 95%, so now they have around 7… That’s just mental. I’m finding it a little hard to believe to be honest. I hope the other 130+ can find jobs.

    • That is insane. I work in an office with about 100 other people, the impact of losing 95 of them would just be crazy. You couldn’t continue to run the company!

      • Exactly, it’s mad – I was thinking the other 130 could all get a loan each, club together and just make a new studio…?

      • Kev: With 7 staff I wouldnt expect the continue to run the company either. Just a few accountants etc to clean up before the door shuts.

    • To be fair FEAR3 did feel like it had been put together by about 7 people so maybe they just trimmed the dead-weight… ;)
      In case anyone gets offended I’m obviously joking. I felt let down by FEAR3 (and indeed FEAR2) but its always sad to hear people losing their jobs.

  2. You can’t shed 95% of your workforce as it’s not viable. Unless you are working on a mini/XBLA indie game. I hope those people can get another job.

  3. Not another studio closure!!! I wish this world wide economic meltdown would hurry up and F off so the people in the gaming industry could feel like they would still have a job in 6 months time. Doesnt feel like anybody is safe.

  4. You need to update your article guys. Check the original source, i.e. Gamespot. It’s 95% of the Silent Scope team, not 95% of the entire studio. They had another, albeit smaller team anyway.

  5. It seems odd that they had so many working on Silent Scope whereas they only have a small team for their other projects? Granted Fear3 is already out so they only need a small team for any follow-up work/patches etc but still..
    Anyway, i guess the 5% they kept on had already worked for Day One previously and the 95% were those hired specifically for Silent Scope.
    Being out of work is no fun so i hope those people all find new projects.

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