Lone at Dawn Echo developer Ready at Dawn has reportedly been heavily hit by the latest round of job cuts at Meta Quest and VR owner Meta, with one employee claiming a third of the studio was laid off, including the studio head Has gone.
As originally reported by The Washington Post, today’s layoffs could affect as many as 4,000 employees at Meta, and follow the company’s plans to cut a further 10,000 jobs in 2023, following the 11,000 job losses announced last year. Part of the stated goal.
The Washington Post claims that Meta has targeted “highly skilled employees” — including engineers and other technical staff — in its latest round of layoffs, and since its report, employees have joined Ready at Dawn and fellow Meta acquisition Downpour Interactive. Affected both.
“My choice of words is I can’t dislike M*ta, so let me just say that Ready at Dawn was an amazing studio full of incredible people,” said Colin McInerney, now former technical designer. Tweeted, Add“I have one thing so I’ll be fine. Many of my co-workers won’t.”
Thomas Griebel, senior engine/graphics programmer at Ready at Dawn, also took to Twitter and shed some light on the scale of the developer job losses. Write that “1/3 of the studio was closed today including the studio head”.
For Downpour Interactive, which created the VR tactical shooter Onward and was acquired by Meta in 2021, senior designer Michael Zarouhas Tweeted“I just quit Meta and don’t work on Onward anymore”, while studio level designer Dan van Zelst wrote“Today is a dark and difficult day at work. I can’t believe what’s happening right now.”
Today’s news is the latest in a wave of job cuts in the games industry, with Microsoft, Take-Two, Riot Games, EA, Twitch and Hasbro announcing layoffs over the past few months.