14 DAY TRIAL // Raven Software, which has recently released its latest shooter, Wolfenstein, to the public, has laid off a number of people, with most sources saying that 56 staff members out of 180 workers are now out of a job.
It seems that the layoffs were a direct result of the workload that the company has completed and of how the future is shaping up for it. Wolfenstein has been regarded as being derivative and not too interesting, as Nazis are again fought this time with the assistance of some pretty run of the mill paranormal Veil-based powers.
After a bunch of Internet sources reported on the layoffs, Activision Blizzard, the mother company of Raven, confirmed them via a statement that read “With the recent completion of both X-Men Origins Wolverine, based on the summer blockbuster movie, and Wolfenstein, the next chapter of the famed franchise, Raven Software is slightly reducing its workforce to better reflect the studio's upcoming slate.” It appears that the overall future of the development outfit is secure and that it will be shortly announcing a new project it is working on.
Kotaku is also reporting that inside sources are claiming that, now, there are two fully staffed internal teams at the studio. One of those is probably still working on Singularity, which has been pushed to 2010 by Activision so it does not compete with holiday blockbuster Modern Warfare 2. It's not clear what the other team is working on at the moment.
Singularity is a science fiction-oriented first person shooter heavily based on time manipulation. The game has been gaining momentum for some time, with some intriguing marketing from Raven. The development studio needs to develop some new intellectual property quickly as id Software, its collaborator, is now under the wing of Bethesda Softworks.