Next please. SEGA is also in the red and is devoting itself to restructuring. A well-known studio is now being sold and a whole bunch of jobs are being cut.
There is simply no end to the crisis in the gaming industry. Now it’s SEGA’s turn to save money. Like colleagues from GamesIndustry.biz report, this includes the sale of Relic Entertainment, the developers of Company of Heroes and Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War. In the future, the studio wants to operate as an independent studio together with an investor and continue working on current projects. Relic was acquired by SEGA in 2013 following THQ’s bankruptcy. Details of the takeover by the investor have not yet been published.
But SEGA is also taking the red pencil in-house and wants to restructure, especially in Europe. However, around 240 jobs will be lost, with Creative Assembly, SEGA Hardlight and SEGA Europe in particular being affected. Two Point Studios and Sports Interactive should get away with a black eye. Creative Assembly had most recently worked on the multiplayer shooter Hyenas, but its development was stopped in September 2023. It was already announced back then that there would be restructuring at SEGA.
The measures taken were justified as follows: “The business environment in the consumer sector, particularly in the European region, has changed rapidly, including due to the decline in demand following Covid-19 and the economic downturn due to inflation, so profitability has fallen is.”
Jurgen Post, the newly appointed boss of Sega Europe, said: “I would like to sincerely apologize for the concern and understandable distress that this news will cause, especially among those directly affected. These decisions were incredibly difficult to make, and they are the result of careful consideration and consultation with the company’s leadership teams. The changes are necessary to secure the future of our games business and to ensure that we are well positioned to continue to provide the best possible experiences for our players in the future. We need to streamline , focus on what we do well and prepare ourselves as best we can for the future. To achieve this, we must respond to the changing economic landscape and the challenges we face in developing and marketing our products have to ask.”
Creative Assembly is best known for its Total War strategy series. With Hyenas, the team is now trying out a PvPvE multiplayer shooter. Pirmin plunged into the closed beta for you and reports on his experiences.
