UK studio Netspeak Games has said that 25 of its staff are facing redundancy.
The firm’s debut game Sunshine Days, a cosy life sim, is in soft launch now, but it appears the studio could not raise further funding to maintain its current operations. The studio will continue to develop Sunshine Days, it said.
In a note posted to the company’s blog today, CEO Callum Cooper-Brighting said: “Navigating mobile gaming’s landscape, marked by evergreen top-grossing titles and evolving user acquisition and privacy issues, has always been a complex endeavour. But the last 12 months have been especially tough.”
Referencing a difficult funding climate, Cooper-Brighting continued: “We hit major milestones that in previous versions of the industry, would have easily triggered new investment. But the fact is that new IP is just a huge risk.”
Later in the blog, he added: “We realised that without extra financial support (needed to combat the rise in price of UA across all channels as well as to keep cash flowing for a game with a long payback period) and after considering all other possible options, we unfortunately concluded that we will likely have to scale down our operations.”
Netspeak says it is still looking at alternatives to redundancy, but wanted to give the 25 potentially staff affected a better chance of finding new opportunities by going public with the situation.
