Team17 has announced a round of layoffs. The company that created the Worms franchise and has published numerous indie games announced this decision among its staff on Friday. However, a Team17 spokesperson said this should only result in a few people being actually let go.
The British publisher and developer has had a rough patch for the last three years. The trouble started when it announced MetaWorms, an NFT project which would sell procedurally generated images of characters from Worms. A lot of developers expressed their displeasure at the idea, threatening not to work with Team17 in the future if the project goes ahead. In addition, a lot of employees also joined the verbal protest and reported they were blindsided by the announcement themselves. This opened up a wave of reports from employees about ongoing and previous mistreatments within the company. The accusations included long work hours, increased workload, and low salaries which led to subpar products, according to insider reports. Team17 promised to address these issues in 2022, but it's hard to tell whether conditions improved. However, with the sudden announcement of layoffs, it seems definite not everything has been righted internally.
Team17 announced the bad news to its staff at 4 pm on Friday. The changes will apparently occur due to internal restructuring, as Team17 will be focusing more on its publishing rather than development, handing over its IPs to partners. Therefore, those employees who were most affected are from the art and design teams. Despite this, a spokesperson at the company said this doesn't necessarily lead to redundancies, as Team17 is encouraging its staff to apply to other positions internally. This way, the publisher apparently hopes it'll be able to serve its partners more efficiently. The truth about the actual number of redundancies will likely only come to light at a later date.
Although Team17 has enjoyed steady growth in the last two years, with its team expanding from 120 to 200 just in its Wakefield office within that time, its HR practices didn't seem to evolve alongside. No further news has been reported on whether the company kept its promise of pay rises and better working conditions. If anything, it seems it's making large and efficient cuts as employees reported they lost immediate access to internal systems on Friday.
Perhaps members of the staff will come forward in time to reveal more about Team17's work climate. Regardless, Team17 will be busy with numerous projects that it has waiting in the pipeline.
Source: Eurogamer