Splash Damage to undergo more layoffs following split from Tencent

Splash Damage has had a rough time in recent years. The company had joined Tencent as part of the Chinese conglomerate's push into the western videogame market. After Splash Damage's promising Transformers game was cancelled earlier this year, the company took steps to split off from Tencent but unfortunately, the company's financials are still in rough shape, so further redundancies are expected.

Splash Damage is a UK-based games studio, best known for games like Brink, Dirty Bomb, Gears Tactics and more. After the cancellation of Transformers: Reactivate back in January, the company moved to split off from Tencent with the help of unnamed private equity firms. Unfortunately, with new major cash injection on the horizon from a new game release, Splash Damage is now being forced to undertake more cost-cutting measures.

As noted by Eurogamer, the last game that Splash Damage successfully shipped was Outcasters, which was an exclusive to the now defunct Google Stadia cloud gaming platform. Staff were informed of company-wide layoffs at the studio earlier this week and now, Splash Damage has released its public statement, saying:

“This was a difficult step for us to take, but we believe it is necessary so Splash Damage can remain agile and adaptable in what has been a very challenging market”.

While there will be redundancies, the company says it is “exploring every option to retain talent and making sure those affected have meaningful support throughout”.

KitGuru Says: It is a real shame that Transformers: Reactivate got cancelled. The game looked promising and likely would have been shipping in the next year or so after extensive development.

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