Seems there might be bad times ahead at Carbine Studios – known for their sci-fi MMO Wildstar. NCSoft announced today that it has reduced the staff at the studio, and it’s not just a few people either. It’s around seventy, which accounts for about 40% of Carbine’s strength. Ouch.

Wildstar of course launched well, but has hit harder times recently. The game was due to come to China as well but that’s been cancelled along with the staff cuts and when it went free-to-play about six months ago it was in a bid to try and attract players to the game. Despite reassurances that the staff losses were just down to ‘restructuring’ we all know that’s the word that studios use when they’ve had to lay off staff because things aren’t performing quite as hoped.

The ‘restructuring’ was announced in a post on the Wildstar forums, in which NCSoft said that the cuts are related “to Wildstar‘s evolution from a product in development to a live title, to the cancellation of work to bring Wildstar to China, and to the overall performance of Wildstar since launch in 2014.” They do say however that they remain “committed to the game” and will be delivering some major updates and community events in coming weeks.

The full statement from NCSoft regarding the layoffs is below:

Earlier this morning, Carbine Studios completed a reorganization of its operating structure. Moving forward, the studio will focus on operating and updating WildStar as a live game in the US and Europe. As part of this change, the studio has canceled its plans to bring WildStar to China.

 

Unfortunately, as a result of these changes, we’ve had to reduce staff. These cuts are directly tied to WildStar’s evolution from a product in development to a live title, to the cancelation of work to bring WildStar to China, and to the overall performance of WildStar since launch in 2014.

 

These kinds of decisions are exceptionally difficult. The talented and passionate professionals who are impacted by these cuts have been valuable team members and respected colleagues. We wish everyone well for the future and will be providing severance and employment search assistance.

 

As for WildStar, we remain committed to the game. Over the next few weeks and months we will deliver a significant update to the game, kick off a variety of community events, and continue our work on new content that we will talk more about in the near future.