Playtonic, the creators of Yooka-Laylee, is laying off some of its staff, the developer and publisher announced on social media. The post doesn’t mention how many members of Playtonic will be effected, but does credit the layoffs to the company’s struggle with “a period of profound change in how games are created and funded.”
Based on a LinkedIn post shared by Playtonic brand manager Anni Valkama, the layoffs include staff members who worked in production, various art departments, game design, narrative design and UI/UX design. Playtonic only lists around 50 staff members on LinkedIn, but given the studios growth into a publisher and its upcoming release of Yooka-Replaylee, its possible the actual team is a bit larger.
While Playtonic likely isn’t safe from the problems of funding and selling games that other developers have, hiring up for a new project like Yooka-Replaylee and then laying those new hires off before the game is released is a fairly common practice. There’s no way to know if that’s the case here without more information, but it’s worth stating.
Yooka-Laylee was pitched as a spiritual sequel to Banjo-Kazooie and other character-focused action-platformers when it debuted on Kickstarter in 2015, perhaps unsurprising given that Playtonic was founded by former developers from Rare, the creators of Banjo-Kazooie and newer hits like Sea of Thieves. In fact, many of the games Playtonic has published under its “Playtonic Friends” publishing label fall in that Rare sweet spot, whether its the cute action-adventure game Lil Gator Game or the difficult platformer Demon Turf.