Massively OP has been contacted by a former Perfect World employee — who wishes to remain anonymous and whose identity we have confirmed — about a fresh round of layoffs to hit the company, this time at its European branch.
Our source says that around five or six people responsible for the entirety of the Russian market have been let go without notice, along with a French community manager, a German community manager, and an assistant product manager. The community managers had apparently been with the company only a few months. The Russian layoffs particularly surprised our source, as the source believes that Russia alone was responsible for a significant portion of PWE’s European income at one point.
Our source isn’t sure whether still more staff beyond these confirmed layoffs are affected, and we don’t know which games might suffer, though the French CM is believed to have worked on Forsaken World, and the Russian team members were likely working on Neverwinter.
Earlier this month, Perfect World’s US division was slammed with layoffs, 18 of them from Cryptic Studios, the team behind Neverwinter, Star Trek Online, and Champions Online, among other unannounced secret projects.
We have reached out to Perfect World and will update when we know more.
