THQ to Layoff 30

The odds are that unless you are a big fan of video games you have not heard of THQ. The company describes itself as:

“THQ Inc. (NASDAQ: THQI) is a leading worldwide developer and publisher of interactive entertainment software. The company develops its products for all popular game systems, personal computers and wireless devices. Headquartered in Los Angeles County, California, THQ sells product through its global network of offices located in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.”

The company is the mastermind behind games such as: Saints Row: The Third, Warhammer® 40,000: Space Marine®, and Warhammer® 40,000®: Dawn of War II® – Retribution™.

Despite the company’s success in the games market, it is having some serious fiscal issues that may slow down, or even stop the flow of games from the company. THQ is getting ready to let go of about one dozen workers in their offices in Australia. They have also begun the process of closing down its offices in Japan, according to reports filed by the Japanese media.

This is not the first time that the company has let go of staff in order to get rid of staff. The Play THQ division, which designs products for the relatively unpopular uDraw line, let go of 30 people recently.  They also recently close a few other studios in Australia, letting go of about 200 workers in the process. Those layoffs were part of a plan to refocus the company. They are looking to get out of the children’s licensed games market and instead focus solely on the more lucrative market of hardcore gamers. The company believes that this will help put them on the right track fiscally, which the company is in desperate need of, as it is being predicted by some analysts that the company will be out of cash by the first quarter of next year.

They are, of course, not the only game company to layoff staff in the recent past. Id games also laid off workers recently. For those of you who missed our earlier coverage here is an excerpt:

“Earlier in this week members of the staff at the game maker Ubisoft was able to confirm that some of its staff was being let go. The cuts came from a company that is owned by Bethesda Softworks, known as id Software. The id Software staff is being let go in multiple waves. While some of the staff was let go on Tuesday, other staffing cuts are going to be made in the near future. This means that at the current moment we do not have specific numbers on how many staff members are to be cut in total, for the current moment we do not even have an estimate.

Bethesda Softworks released an official statement about the layoffs in order to quell rumors of a shutdown of id Software. ‘As part of its standard business practice, id regularly evaluates staffing to ensure it has a workforce that meets the needs of the studio. As part of that process, some id employees were recently let go.’

These cuts come after the studio’s first new IP in more than 10 years. The game in question is called Rage. Rage was released for a variety of platforms, but suffered some technical issues on both the PC and more traditional gaming consoles such as the PS3 and the Xbox 360. This did not however prevent the game from getting some measure of commercial success. The game was given decent scores by gamers. Xbox 360 players gave the game an average rating of 82 percent, games on the Playstation 3 gave it an 81 percent and PC gamers gave it a 78 percent.”