Life Is Strange: True Colors Developer Deck Nine Announces It Is Laying Off 20% Of Staff

Deck Nine Games, the team behind Life Is Strange: True Colors, who also worked with Telltale on its recent The Expanse game, has announced it is laying off 20% of staff.

In a statement published to its social media Twitter channel, the studio cited the poor state of the industry in terms of layoffs, and “worsening market conditions” as part of the decision behind the layoff.

“Like many others in the games industry right now, Deck Nine has been affected by the games industry’s worsening market conditions. Today we made the difficult decision to lay off 20% of our staff.

These people are amazing, talented, and awesome developers. They have made a huge impact during their time at Deck Nine Games and we did not take this decision lightly. Please hire these people if you can. they’re amazing.”

There’s no clarification on what that 20% looks like regarding just how many people are now looking for a job. Hopefully all those impacted are able to find new work quickly.

According to game director at Deck Nine Games, Stephan Frost, there was an effort to make this layoff as small as possible. Frost says that “Leadership took paycuts to keep the number down as much as possible.”

He also seems to imply similarly to the studio’s statement that these layoffs are a result of the industry’s poor market conditions, which could be alluding to a lot of issues. The likely culprit though is the same that Die Gute Fabrik also cited as why the studio had to essentially shut down: a lack of funding available in the industry.

Source – [Deck Nine Games]

This story was updated to add more comments from Deck Nine Games staff.