It seems that even if your publisher believes that your game sold well enough to meet expectations, that won’t mean you will be able to keep your job. Today the head of Slant Six, developers of Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, revealed to GameSpot that they have had to let go over a quarter of their workforce after the game was released.
The employees who were laid off were given two choices, either take their severance package and leave, or to take employment insurance for 13 weeks while the developer tries to “look for more projects.” Apparently most of the employees chose the second option. It seems that despite the fact that these people are laid off, the company stressed that “these are temporary layoffs, which means we are working very hard on new business prospects so we can reinstate every single person affected.” So from this statement, it seems that people were let go simply because there was nothing else for them to work on, so perhaps these unfortunate unemployed will soon be re-hired.
