Freeverse to Cut Majority of Jobs

Unless you happen to play a lot of games on your computer the odds are good that you have not heard much about a company called Freeverse. The game company’s not exactly what you may imagine from the name. For those of you who are not familiar with the company here is a look at how they choose to describe themselves, ” Freeverse Software is a leading developer of entertainment software, specializing in card games. Based in New York City, Freeverse titles have received numerous awards and its original characters have appeared in TimeDigital, Wired, and Animation World magazines, as well as in national television commercials for Blockbuster Video. Our developed and published titles have been honored with more Apple Design Awards than any other company. With 2 of the Top 10 paid iPhone Apps of All-Time, Freeverse is at the forefront of creating compelling, cutting edge games.”

Sadly the company has laid off a significant number of its workers in an effort to cut back on its costs. The company is not reported to have less than 10 workers on its staff now that the layoffs are done.

There is no word yet as to whether or not this action will qualify as a mass layoff action under the current federal guidelines. For those of you who are not familiar with the idea of a mass layoff action here is a look at how the federal government defines the term, “The Mass Layoff Statistics (MLS) program collects reports on mass layoff actions that result in workers being separated from their jobs. Monthly mass layoff numbers are from establishments which have at least 50 initial claims for unemployment insurance (UI) filed against them during a 5-week period. Extended mass layoff numbers (issued quarterly) are from a subset of such establishments—where private sector nonfarm employers indicate that 50 or more workers were separated from their jobs for at least 31 days.” Give the fact that the workers did not get the customary advance notice associated with a mass layoff action it is possible that the New York based company simply did not have enough workers to qualify under those terms.

Interesting enough the company choose in one of it more recent news posts not to talk about the job cuts, but instead to tell the gamers who are serviced by the company about a list of titles that they will not be supporting for the newest version of the operating system, “We here at Freeverse have been focusing on creating fantastic mobile games like Fantastic Fish, Skee-Ball and Flick Fishing. Of course with said focus on mobile games, some of our Mac titles have not gotten the attention that we would have liked to provide them. Rather than leaving our customers with a sub-par experience running certain titles under OS X Lion, and in light of phasing out our GameSmith service later this summer, we’ve made the hard decision to discontinue the following titles: Airburst, Big Bang Board Games, Burning Monkey Casino, Burning Monkey Mahjong, Burning Monkey Puzzle Lab, Burning Monkey Solitaire, Enigma, Periscope, Squabble, ToySight, 3D Bridge, 3D Crazy 8s, Euchre Deluxe, Hearts Deluxe, Pitch-Setback, Spades Deluxe, CrossCards, X-Words Deluxe.” Though to be honest these changes may have a lot to do with the new lack of manpower to update the games.