Eidos fire 30 Crystal Dynamics employees

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Joystiq says:

Eidos confirms Crystal Dynamics layoffs

Following tips that Crystal Dynamics, current developer of the Tomb Raider series, experienced layoffs yesterday, publisher Eidos has confirmed to Joystiq that approximately 30 employees have been let go. When asked what the reason for the layoffs were, a company spokesperson said, "We have increased the focus on the Tomb Raider franchise at Crystal Dynamics, regrettably this has resulted in the reduction in headcount." Increased focus means layoffs ... okay?

Follow up questions regarding Eidos' sales expectations for Tomb Raider Underworld and how those figures were projected were not answered. The Crystal Dynamics layoffs come following Eidos' disappointment with Tomb Raider Underworld sales.

Read the truth here: I'm one of the 30 who got fired by Eidos, ask away

As you all have heard we got fired because Eidos didn't make as much of a profit as they hoped, to be able to buy another Ferrari in another color for each of their greedy executives.

So we, the people who do most of the work and who really needed the job had to make room so the lazy millionaires who rarely show up at work because they are busy tanning on a beach somewhere on Hawaii, had a sacrificial lamb to slaughter. Now of course everything is solved.....?

No. Eidos and the people with high paid jobs who 'couldn't care less about this silly game' (real quote from a small unofficial meeting about Tomb Raider by one of them) are the problem and everyone knows this. Even they themselves know it. But how can they fire themselves or the ones they are close to....? This is just show for shareholders and them trying to save their own lazy butts.

Yes, I am ****ed off. We were forced to sign a paper which basically says we can't talk about it ir get sued for a lot of money...well, come and find me Eidos!

Ask away and as long as it doesn't endanger the job of someone else, I will answer.

When you get fired by a company, you don't exactly get a medal pinned on your suit. It will haunt you everytime you apply for a job in that sector because it is mentioned. And if you got fired for reasons which had nothing to do with you but with others not doing things.....?

But I will tell my kid(s) (if I have one?) that life is tough.

A few asked if the DLC was part of the game itself. Ask anyone who is part of it and if they are honest they will tell you around 40% of the DLC was meant to be in the game itself, originally. But it was decided later on to take out those parts because they were expecting most sales on the 360 and the DLC the way it looked at the time was looking to be a bit 'thin'. So we were asked to cut some parts out to be used in the DLC. Now this doesn't mean that they will be in the DLC in the exact same manner as they would have been in if they had been used in Underworld. I have to stress that. It is adjusted. So if you would see it in the DLC you don't necessarily think, hey this was taken out of Underworld. But it is. It took away a bit of the 'epic' thing of Underworld.

However the poor sales for the 360 was a bit of a shock and the 360 exclusive now everyone knows was a huge mistake. Guess what, the guys who made that mistake are still working at Eidos. And Eidos will lose lots of money on it when they release it. Hence the stalling.
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Some of us are huge fans of Legacy of Kain but no money means no game. Defiance didn't have a closed end for a reason. There were some stuff done around defiance which could result in a game but again, the high paid folks had a say in that and as we can see, they make amazing choices!

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Crystal never made plans to remake Angel of darkness but we did study the games of Core. And that of course influences what we do to an extent and Angel of Darkness I think had some impact on the Underworld.

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That really sucks, SacrifialLamb. But that you worked there proves you have the talent. And who has that talent in essence is a freelancer. And will be welcomed by a next company, have faith in that. :thumbup:

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News.

Hey everybody, this is Eric Lindstrom.

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The main thing I wanted to clear up is about DLC. Everything I have ever said about this is true. I don't work for Crystal anymore so I have no reason to lie, nor does my severance agreement tell me to do so. I can tell you without doubt that the content of DLC was absolutely not held back from Underworld for the purpose of selling later down the road. I am one of only three people who knows this for sure because not only were there only three of us in the room at the time the decision was made, I was the one who made it. We had a production issue that was going to make us miss our ship date -- which we could not do -- and I needed to find a way to cut enough days from the schedule in a manner that would not rip a hole in the game that would take time to sew up. It was my idea to cut what was cut, and I did hope that it would one day be made available as a download mission, because there was great content already conceived and half completed, but on the day we made the cut, it was made purely for Underworld production reasons. Even if I was told on that day that we would never ever make a downloabable level, I still would have had to cut it. Anyone who says otherwise is speculating or heard someone else speculating, and is incorrect.

Here's a short answer that I can expand on later. The segment of the gaming audience that is interested in and patient with the kind of difficult and fatal gameplay you miss is too small for current AAA games to support. There is no model for making a game that cost as much as Underworld cost that could recoup that investment without appealing to a broader audience. This flies directly in conflict with much of what made Tomb Raider great at the start, and trying to find the right balance was a big part of my job. I know that the answer we presented disappoints the hardcore fans, and it was unavoidable. We can strive to make games as exciting as the past, but you likely won't ever see games as demanding as they were in the old days.

I absolutely wish we could have spent more time polishing Underworld.
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I take my share of responsibility of aiming so high that we had a reduced ability to spend time on polish.”

Hi Eric, hope things are better.

I don't want to start a huge disagreement here in public, but most of what was said by the other ex-employee I think still stands. Namely, Underworld was cut and many of those cut parts are in the DLC, one way or the other. We all know this and you also said this in a different wording in your first post.

The contradiction between you two is this: he alluded it was specifically done for the DLC, you say it was done before there was any contact with Microsoft. I and many at Crystal believed a deal was done before the cuts, because it wasn't really talked about, at least not in those terms which would make it very clear. Which is probably why you mentioned that people who believe that version misinterpret things.

This means I have to trust you when you say you made that decision before there was a deal with Microsoft. And having talked to you I know I can trust you with that. You are one of the good guys so I will support your version, namely the cuts were done before the deal with Microsoft was even in sight. And the other ex-employee and others had a wrong impression of how it went.

However, here is the big problem and I know you won't talk about it because your identity is now known: Eidos is trying to sell it as something totally different as you have noticed too, including by the posts of Eidos employees here. They say the DLC has none of the Underworld content, while we know that is a lie.

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And they have lied about these kind of things before, about other matters which I won't go into, because they know it can't be countered openly by us. Unfortunately the fans here just believe every word they say while we know it is not true. But because we are forbidden by Eidos to post here to counter it, it stands as the truth.


And I think the lies by Eidos and their employees need to stop, right here, right now. They damage us. And if I may be free to play the boss, not 1 person at Crystal should have been let go, but 3 times the amount at Eidos should have been.

Etcetera. The thread is: Ask Eric

Yeah, right Eidos... blame recession. 1.5 million copies sold in the last 2 months of 2008, but it should have been 2 million? Sacking 30 of CD's talented masters will help...

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This is interesting. True, TR being a 'third person shooter':

Tomb Raider games are one of the hardest kinds of games I've ever worked on or even heard of. Take Gears of War. It's a great game. You are running through a channel, firing guns, sticking to cover...it's about enemy AI and weapon tuning, and visual and sound effects. That's it. They can focus on that and make it sing. You can make the art exactly how it should look because you know where the player will be when (s)he looks at it, because they are stuck in the channel. Tomb Raider games, though...in additiona to its hardcore gaming roots, you climb on all kinds of things, you are far from things, you are close to things, you fight things, you melee and shoot, you solve puzzles, maze...the sheer breadth of things you can do is supported by a labrytnth of code and design, and the way these systems interact explodes with permutational problems -- which was what sunk the digital camera for example. As much as I love Tomb Raider, I was often heard to mutter in the halls "I want my next game to be a shooter..." not because they are easy, but because they are about one thing, not twelve.

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Source developmag

Lay-offs hit Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics

Michael French Jan 11 2009, 11:37am

Around 30 staff at Lara Croft team let go as studio downsizes
Eidos has confirmed that around 30 staff have been let go from its US studio Crystal Dynamics.

The news, first reported on Kotaku and then confirmed by 1up, comes shortly after Eidos revised its full year financials (ending June 30th 2009) down from a projected £180m-£200m to £160m-£180m as a result of 'disappointing' sales of the latest Tomb Raider title.

The game was expected to sell 2m copies around the world, but sold 500,000 units less, at 1.5m units sold in six weeks on the market.

Unlike other publisher-owned studios, which have linked lay-offs to the economic pinch, Eidos said the move was part of a 'reduction of headcount' at the studio as it looks to focus on just the Tomb Raider titles.

An Eidos rep told 1up: "We have increased the focus on the Tomb Raider franchise at Crystal Dynamics; regrettably this has resulted in the reduction in headcount."

Eidos CFO Robert Brent has also since confessed that the publisher might instigate another revamp of series icon Lara Croft in a bid to revitalise interest in the character.