Harmonix, makers of Rockband 2 and Rockband: The Beatles has apparently laid off 39 employees according to Joystiq (although I’m hearing from someone related to the company that it was 40 or 13% of their team). Oddly, as of the time of this writing they had 5 job openings on their website. As a member of the local game development community, I am saddened and disheartened by this move. I worked across from Harmonix during my time at gamerDNA and I could see their CEO from my desk and he could see me.
Most of the jobs were in QA (might have explained why when I spoke with their QA manager 2 days ago he seemed kinda bummed and worn down) but there were others as well. This certainly puts a damper on things after they just had their holiday party last weekend.
While it does make sense that if they are in the early stages of development they might not need so many QA people, its really sad to see this happen and it will negatively impact the Boston game development community. Rockband The Beatles had sales of at least $60M USD, and overall the Rockband titles have netted over $1B. Obviously MTV and distribution takes a huge cut of that, but either way, its big money.
This isn’t helping the local economy, local game developers or anyone really. This time last year it was reported that the Harmonix founders, Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy, were getting $300M in bonuses on top of the $150M of bonuses handed out before. Seems like something closer to Wall Street than Massachusetts Ave.
I hope the best for all of them and that they are quickly picked up by other local companies. QA testing is a tough job and they get laid off too often in this industry.
