Been quite a week.
Friday - 007 First Light release party, celebrating the company’s best reviewed and fastest selling game ever
Monday - Get a text from co-worker there’s talk of redundancies
Tuesday - Called in by HR and let go
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Oh damn. So the cuts aren’t just closing the Istanbul studio, they’re also cutting roles in the others too because he was in Copenhagen I think.
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Start by cutting HR instead…
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https://mediabrowser.hitmaps.com/
Here is a website by Hitmaps to search through all of 007’s and the Hitman games’ UI images (and voice lines), if you want to appreciate some of his work. 
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Absolutely terrible news!! 
I hope he lands on his feed somewhere because he did a brilliant job, especially on Hitman WOA.
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It’s a shame talented developers and studios are being culled.
I would assume that IO have known the Microsoft/Project Fantasy deal has been cancelled for a while, but were hedging their bets on First Light’s success…but maybe that game underperformed against IO or Amazon’s sky-high expectations and that’s why we have these layoffs. Or maybe the reason really is because of Microsoft pulling away from Project Fantasy…
However, despite First Light being the ‘fastest-selling IO game’ and its developers apparently being given bonuses for its success, the fact that there are mass layoffs just a month later makes it all sound suspicious. IO surely knew about the Microsoft pull-out and possible closures a month ago? Ergo, First Light hasn’t done as well as they hoped and they’ve had to go ahead with downsizing. Just my theory, I have no real insight or business knowledge.
This wider IO talk is probably a bit off-topic for the Project Fantasy thread. Maybe someone should make a new post about these closures with a sensitive and respectful title, like ‘How Fucked Is IO?’.
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Yea he’s Danish. He was there
I’m not sure it’s broken even yet.
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Not my finding, I saw it posted on Discord, but someone that worked at IOI Istanbul has confirmed the entire studio is completely gone.
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