We’ve been keeping a very worried eye on Cryptic Studios for the last year or so, ever since it became clear that the floundering Embracer Group was planning to split up the Gearbox-run studios and parcel them out to soothe investor worries, at the cost of many jobs at the end of 2023. And though Cryptic was one of the megacorp’s more solid studios, it nevertheless saw its MMOs – Neverwinter, Star Trek Online, and Champions Online – shuttled off to the tiny Embracer-owned European outfit DECA Games. Indeed, last spring, the remaining Cryptic devs made clear that the future of the MMORPGs themselves was secure, but the implication was that Cryptic’s long-term future was not. At the time, then-Cryptic-CEO Phil Frazier intimated that players should expect more Cryptic departures as DECA continued taking over the title.
Well, apparently, those departures are manifesting now. Frazier himself left the studio in July for a move to Wargaming, and as panicked Star Trek Online fans have been cataloguing, this month the MMO teams will lose senior community manager Mike Fatum (you likely knew him as Ambassador Kael), senior artist Mauricio Tejerina, environment artist Gianna Rockwell, and character artist Amelia March. In fact, this appears to be just the tip of the iceberg. Star Trek Online streamer CasualSAB reports that the layoffs were widespread and that “nearly all remaining Cryptic staff” save a few team leads and DECA-hires have been affected.
“Like many folks posting today, I now officially know my last date with Cryptic Studios,” Fatum posted on Linkedin earlier this week. “If you’re looking for a Community Manager with experience building a nontoxic community, with excellent hosting skills and deep social media knowledge, send me a message, I’d love to work with you!”
Rockwell was more explicit, calling her departure “part of the layoffs at Cryptic” that will fire off “at the end of the month.” Tejerina and March also use the term “layoff.” The studio hasn’t actually acknowledged the layoffs yet, but if Frazier’s commentary from March holds true, these jobs are being moved to DECA and its newly hired remote workers; in fact, some folks on Reddit are already talking about some of the specific new hires (and they don’t sound terrible). It’s just that nobody wanted to see Cryptic employees gone in the first place, and there’s not much faith in the future of the games.
Our sincere condolences to the Cryptic workers affected, which is pretty much all of them, one way or another. Last one out has to write the studio closure post – a crap way for a major MMO studio to end.
