NCsoft Austin Layoffs: 70 Down, 230 To Go

A report on F13.net claims that NCsoft's US office underwent a big layoff earlier this week, citing a posting made on a developers-only message board. GMs (Game Masters), Tech Support and QA employees are said to have been the main target of this restructuring, though the precise figures from the initial report were later dismissed as "not just barely wrong, but all wrong". Nevertheless, NCsoft did confirm that its Austin based studio went through an "immediate restructuring", saying that approximately 70 of its 300 employees had been terminated.

The initial report points the finger at City of Heroes / City of Villians' declining number of subscribers, and the failure of NCsoft's latest MMO, Auto Assault:

"They are blaming the declining subscriber numbers for City of Heroes/COV which has slowly dropped to just over 100k total. Also to blame has been the disaster that is Auto Assault, which has yet to climb over 10k total subscribers since its launch in the third week in April.

Tabula Rasa continues to suck massive amounts of cash, yet still has no release date in sight."

Official confirmation received by GameSpot only states that "COH/COV has been at 150,000 subscribers or more during the two years the franchise has been on the market", thus avoiding to indicate the game's actual (present) subscribers count. As for Auto Assault, NCsoft is even more reluctant to give exact figures:

"We are still assessing Auto Assault's performance and can't comment on its current status. We can say that these sorts of changes are a result of many factors in our business, all of which are constantly being checked and rechecked as part of our regular assessment process."

But despite the layoffs, NCsoft says that none of their development teams have been affected by the move, noting that Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa team is still in hiring mode. Still, don't expect to see it released anytime soon!

(N.B. Archive text, links removed)