Report: Turbine Cuts Staff At Both Studios

Massively multiplayer online game developer Turbine has become the latest games company to cut its staff, with reports of redundancies at its Massachusetts headquarters and its only recently-founded Redwood City, California studio. The layoffs came from QA and account management, and follow the recent completion of expansion pack Mines of Moria for The Lord of the Rings Online, according to a report from GamesIndustry.biz. The news follows reports yesterday of more drastic job cuts at Lair developer Factor 5 and publisher Midway’s closure of its Austin, Texas studio and 25 percent reduction of its global workforce. "Yesterday, Turbine took steps to align our business to successfully achieve our strategic goals in the years ahead," says a Turbine spokesperson. "As part of this transition, some of our talented colleagues will not be with us going forward." The developer has declined to provide numbers or details on how many staffers it let go, but indicates that it has no plans to outsource QA or technical support services in the future –- implying that the numbers involved may be relatively small. "The changes will not affect the operation of our three games, the development of future products and services or the customer experience that we are committed to delivering," says Turbine. "We just finished a major project with the launch of Mines of Moria, and are now adjusting our resources to focus on several other projects that are in development," the statement continues. "In fact, Turbine is still hiring and we will continue to grow in 2009."