LucasArts lays off 75 to 100 employees

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News of the rumored layoffs at LucasArts that we broke yesterday afternoon were confirmed today by the developer, which maintained that they remain committed to their internal studio. "I can confirm we had layoffs yesterday they were in the studio," said LucasArts spokeswoman Margaret Grohne. "They had to do with where we are in our product life cycles."
Yesterday a number of former LucasArts staffers contacted us to say that 75 to 100 employees were laid off from the company, including VP of Product Development Peter Hirschmann and the producer of LEGO Indiana Jones and LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga, Shawn Storc.
The layoffs come months after former president Jim Ward stepped down from heading the company and was replaced by Darrell Rodriguez, a former Electronic Arts COO.
According to our sources up to 80 percent of staff has been laid off in departments such as Production Services, which includes QA and Compliance, with jobs planned to be outsourced overseas. Cuts were also said to be made in development, with art and programming staffers being laid off.
While Grohne declined to talk specifics, she did say that Hirschmann was no longer with the company and that his departure was a "mutual decision."
While our sources told us that the layoffs cut deeply into the developer's internal studio, leaving the company short-staffed, Grohne maintained that the company is healthy and remains committed to internal development.
"We are healthy," she said. "LEGO Indie was launched on seven platforms to positive reviews, The Force Unleashed and Fracture are on track for this fall. We have a good slate of games and we have some good stuff going on in production.
"We are definitely committed to the internal studio."

wow

[RaTix]

I Think Inlimbo was mentioning this to me the other night. SWBFIII kinda confirmed now.

According to former LucasArts employees, there is a KOTOR 3 project with BioWare and it's an MMO...

LucasArts employees have been spilling the beans on unannounced LucasArts projects following a cull of around 100 staff at the company this week. At the top of the list of juicy revelations is that the unannounced LucasArts/BioWare project is KOTOR3, and it's the long rumoured MMO!

Kotaku reports that some of these 100 LucasArts have been sacked immediately after many years of service and that the sackings are spread across the company, from Testers to Head Producers.

As well as the Knights of the Old Republic MMO, these former employees have also been revealing other as yet unannounced titles in the LucasArts schedule. These include the much expected Battlefront 3 (probably in development at Free Radical Design), another LEGO Indiana Jones game, the Euphoria-driven Indiana Jones games unveiled at E3 2006, and a Star Wars lightsaber game for Nintendo's Wii. The final game is likely to be the Clone Wars game first hinted at last week.

Although games such as Fracture and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed are too far along the development cycle to be affected by the sackings, other projects may well be. These sackings will leave LucasArts short staffed and reports suggest that the publisher will likely be outsourcing their projects more frequently in future.

[keyser28146]

Just seeing "Star Wars Battlefront III" in black and white print turned me into a blathering sugar-rushing 8 year old.

[Tomahawk]

Actually that was me Ratix. And I've known about this for almost a week

[RaTix]

lol, I actually thought it might have been you, or maybe both, who the hell knows. Inlimbo is usually the one on top of all industry info, so I went with the safer bet. All I know is, one of the appendages of this Vultron said it.

[Deslock]

Kotaku reports that some of these 100 LucasArts have been sacked immediately after many years of service and that the sackings are spread across the company, from Testers to Head Producers.

As well as the Knights of the Old Republic MMO, these former employees have also been revealing other as yet unannounced titles in the LucasArts schedule. These include the much expected Battlefront 3 (probably in development at Free Radical Design), another LEGO Indiana Jones game, the Euphoria-driven Indiana Jones games unveiled at E3 2006, and a Star Wars lightsaber game for Nintendo's Wii. The final game is likely to be the Clone Wars game first hinted at last week.

Although games such as Fracture and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed are too far along the development cycle to be affected by the sackings, other projects may well be. These sackings will leave LucasArts short staffed and reports suggest that the publisher will likely be outsourcing their projects more frequently in future.

Like most U.S. corporations, it's good to know that the employees were properly rewarded for their years of service.

If this country continues on this abhorent path of needless and unwanted greed, the only jobs you'll find is for CEO's for companies, oh,


and janitors.

With nothing in between. This cannot be allowed to continue. When these companies do this horrid firing trend of American workers, it pretty much amounts to basically treason to me.

Our economy is in the shitter, and things like this don't help.