Hi-Rez Studios and its sub-studios are embarking on a wave of layoffs, CEO Stewart Chisam announced bright and early this morning. Chisam characterizes the downsizing as “difficult but necessary changes to ensure Hi-Rez’s long-term success, with a specific focus on positioning SMITE 2 for a long and sustainable future.”
“As part of this internal reorganization and reprioritization, we are laying off some team members across Hi-Rez. This will disproportionately impact those in marketing and publishing roles, as well as some from our Evil Mojo, G&A, and Titan Forge divisions. The game team roles impacted disproportionally affect our team working on cosmetic skin content and system features,” Chisam says. “Letting them go is a heartbreaking decision, reflects a failure in my leadership, and one for which I take personal accountability. These are all good people who contributed positively to the company; none should view this as a personal failure.” It is not clear from this post what specific personal accountability will be taken. As MMO Fallout pointedly notes, Chisam didn’t mention reductions or pay cuts for executives.
In any case, it sounds as if the company will pivot to focusing heavily on SMITE 2, at the expense of SMITE 1 and Paladins; while those games still have “teams supporting light updates,” the studio is going all in on SMITE 2, revising its content development plans to put out new modes and gods first.
“Notably, the core dev team currently working on SMITE 2 after these changes is still a significant size: Larger than the SMITE 1 team was throughout most of its lifecycle (outside of a period during and shortly after the pandemic). The team working on gods and gameplay features (versus skins and monetization/progression/system features) is larger than the SMITE 1 team ever was for such features.”
