Report: Silicon Knights Loses A Majority Of Its Staff

Canadian video game developer Silicon Knights has allegedly laid off the majority of its staff.

Sources speaking to 1UP confirmed the news over the weekend, saying that all but 25 of the company's "core staff" were let go.

Though the studio's headcount as of last week is unknown, Silicon Knights was staffed by 97 people in July.

It was at that time that the studio received a CDN$3 million grant from the Ontario government to help expand its headcount. According to president Denis Dyack, the funding would help the company become "self sustaining," and further allowing its staff size to increase from 97 to 177.

That grant came on top of a total of CDN$35 million that the studio had received in grants over the past five years.

The exact nature of the layoffs was not reported by 1UP's sources, nor has the information been officially confirmed by a company representative at press time.

Its latest game, Activision's comic book-licensed X-Men Destiny was a critical flop, with Metacritic scores ranging from 38 to 52 across its three home console SKUs.

Update: Studio CFO Mike Mays has confirmed layoffs at the studio, blaming a project that was cancelled "at the final second" for the necessity of the redundancies. The exact numbers, however, were not accurate in the original report: the current headcount of the studio is "just under 40," not 25 as previously reported, and the amount of employees laid off was 45.