Over the past day, I have identified at least seven Compulsion Games employees who are either marked as “Open to Work” on LinkedIn or have publicly posted that they are seeking new roles. The people identified include staff across production, character art, environment art and technical art, ranging from senior developers to lead and principal-level artists.
And this was not an exhaustive search. These are simply the people found after a brief look through LinkedIn, meaning the real number of affected or concerned staff could be higher.
NOTE: I have chosen not to name names or link directly to individual profiles. While the information is publicly available on LinkedIn, I’m not especially comfortable putting a spotlight on specific developers during what is clearly an uncertain and probably pretty horrible situation.
That does not confirm that Compulsion Games has been closed, nor does it confirm that these developers have been laid off. This might be a case of some staff looking to jump ship in the face of the studio’s shaky future prospects.
However, the number of public job-seeking posts from Compulsion staff in such a short period of time is notable, especially given the seniority of several of the people involved and the fact that the activity appears to have happened in the immediate aftermath of reports that the South of Midnight developer is facing possible closure.
Kotaku previously reported that Compulsion Games was being shut down, before later updating its story to say that the studio’s leadership is currently in negotiations with Microsoft over its future. The nature of those negotiations remains unclear. They could potentially involve a sale, a spin-off, a management buyout, a reduced internal team, or some other arrangement entirely. And according to other reporting, it isn’t just Compulsion that’s negotiating to stay alive: Double Fine, Ninja Theory and Arkane are all facing an uncertain future right now.
For now, the safest conclusion is also the bleakest: something significant appears to be happening at Compulsion Games. Whether that ends in a full closure, a partial restructuring, or an attempt to save the studio outside of Microsoft, we do not know. All we can say with certainty is quite a few people left Compulsion yesterday, June 15th.
Again, none of this is official confirmation that Compulsion Games has been shuttered. But when multiple developers from the same studio, many of them senior, suddenly begin publicly looking for work at the exact same time the studio is reportedly fighting for its future, it paints a pretty grim picture. At best, Compulsion appears to be stuck in limbo. At worst, its staff already know the writing is on the wall.
Buckle up everyone, because it’s going to be a bloodbath. And there will be one question at the end of it: could all the sacrifice still not be enough to save Xbox?
