Today the world of EVE Online woke to the news of multiple layoffs after the closure of the VR Games production branch of the company, according to an Iceland Monitor article.
A few takeaways from the said article:
– CCP Games is putting Virtual Reality video game development on hold until the technology gains traction.
– Out of the 350 employees CCP Games currently employ, this reorganization affects 100 of them.
– CCP Games currently develops three main VR games; Valkyrie, Gunjack and SPARC a non-EVE related video-game.
Coincidentally, two high profile developers just announced their departure from the company; CCP Logibro and CCP Manifest.
It was an honour. o7 7o.
— CCP Logibro (@CCP_Logibro) October 30, 2017
After 2yrs w/White Wolf + 10 w/CCP, my crazy journey is over. Thanks to my coworkers & the BESTEST players of the bestest games. Fly safe,o7 pic.twitter.com/HY8Q7SPVUn
— Ex-CCP Manifest (@CCP_Manifest) October 30, 2017
Needless to say, the community has pretty much gone nuts over all these changes. Amidst the chaos, a voice of reason:
Not a bad call tbh. There hasn’t been enough adoption of the platform to justify spending so many resources on it. If there aren’t enough people using a platform, you won’t get much profit even if you are topping sales charts of that platform.
In 2-3 years, they’ll likely revisit the idea of getting back in on VR if the adoption rate has increased. We’ll probably see 2nd gen consumer headsets and more AAA companies introducing games as well. CCP has planted their flag as competent VR devs, so if the platform picks up in popularity they can get back into the ring without being viewed as just another studio trying to cash in.
In the meantime, hopefully, this means that CCP is going to be able to put more focus into EVE itself.
But that abomination of a p2w mobile app that was shown at Vegas leaves me slightly worried at the direction they are going.– redditor htaedfororreteht
Also, on the official EVE Online forums, there is related discussion thread, CCP Falcon made the following statement:
Hey guys,
Just a quick follow up to this, given that there are questions about EVE, and the future.
Obviously this is a really difficult day for CCP, and it’s been super tough to see a lot of our friends and colleagues end their journey with CCP.
With regards to EVE, it’s kind of bittersweet that this puts us in a more solid position going forward, as a lot more focus is back on EVE Online, its services and all the technology and support around it.
The EVE Online development team was not impacted at all by these changes, and remains the same size, working toward the same goals and features that have already been announced.
We still have very big plans for EVE Online, and everything we’ve announced, plus more, is still going ahead, so there shouldn’t be any concerns from our pilots in that respect.
There’ll be more information about other projects, studios and suchlike in the coming days, and there’s also communication going out soon to the Valkyrie community too that has further information.
