Reports from Massively and Gamasutra indicate that Turbine has had to give an unspecified number of employees their walking papers. Warner Bros. reps released an official statement:
As part of our normal business process, were routinely looking at the strategic alignment of our company. Unfortunately, in order for us to invest in growth areas at Turbine, we have to eliminate some positions. These are always tough decisions, which we dont approach lightly, but its crucial that Turbine is structured in a way that reflects the current and coming marketplace.
That's a lot of corporate buzzwords, and small comfort for the team members who have lost their jobs. There's no official word on who, exactly, got the axe, but one LotRO dev's twitter feed seems to indicate that he was one of them:
It has been one of the biggest pleasures of my life to serve the people of middle-earth and the fans and the players for these last 9 years
— jhd (@amlugDev) February 12, 2014
... and also Hannah Foell, who has been featured many times in our dev tours of LotRO updates:
I had the best time working at Turbine and I'm so incredibly proud of everything I got to work on.
— Hannah Foell (@hannanimal) February 13, 2014
This isn't necessarily disastrous news for gamers. Corporate restructuring can mean a lot of things in the game development world, so it's premature to assume that this news means anything other than what they say it is. Nonetheless, our thoughts are with amlugDev and the others who lost their jobs, and we all hope they land quickly on their feet.
