The developer CCP, the minds behind EVE Online, is shutting down its branch in San Francisco and has laid off two executives from the Icelandic company.
As the gaming business site Gamasutra reports, CCP has parted ways with its development studio in San Francisco. The company’s revenue and earnings have steadily declined over the past few years. With this drastic cut, it is responding to the situation.
While revenue in the first half of the year remained almost the same compared to the previous year, profit shrank from 8.3 million dollars to 4.5 million dollars. High costs were incurred by CCP due to the cancellation of the MMO project World of Darkness. Contracts had to be terminated and severance payments made.
CCP’s manager, Hilmar Veigar Petursson, stated that the new focus of his company should solely be on the universe of EVE Online to help CCP remain strong.
Additionally, the company parted ways with Jon Gallo and David Reid by mutual consent. David Reid was the “Chief Marketing Officer” at CCP, and Jon Gallo was the “Chief Financial Officer.” Reid, as eurogamer.net writes, switched from Trion Worlds to CCP in 2012 and quickly gained popularity as a community manager. Eurogamer.net also does not know exactly what was being worked on at the San Francisco studio but suspects it was mainly in PR, sales, and marketing. The current separation from Gallo and Reid follows departures of other key personnel from CCP, such as EVE’s lead designer Kristoffer Touborg.
In July, CCP had already laid off 49 employees at its headquarters in Reykjavik as part of the cancellation of World of Darkness.
