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[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

Worms publisher Team17 has announced a company restructure likely to result in signficant job losses, Eurogamer understands, with the majority of the developer's internal QA (Quality Assurance) team affected.

The company's CEO Michael Pattison is also expected to leave, sources close to the company say.

Around 50 roles - the vast majority of Team17's QA department - are at risk as part of a major restructuring process, as the company opts to outsource its QA work instead.

The vast majority of the job losses within the QA team - indicated in a new proposed team structure document shared with staff members today - are of junior QA analyst roles.

Outside of QA, it's unclear to what extent other departments are also affected by restructuring plans. Eurogamer has contacted Team17 for comment.

These latest layoffs follow job losses at Team17 earlier in the year within the company's internal development teams. At the time, staff were told further layoffs would not occur.

Staff affected by these latest redundancies were informed of the news via an emergency town hall meeting this morning. A consultation process on the changes has now begun, and will conclude in November.

Pattison has worked at Team17 for two years. He joined in October 2021 as CEO after previously working at PlayStation.

Significant job losses likely at Worms publisher Team17 - sources

Worms publisher Team17 has announced a company restructure likely to result in signficant job losses, Eurogamer underst…

www.eurogamer.net

 

[GHG]

Still calling them the "worms publisher" is a bit of a stretch these days.

We haven't had a decent worms game in almost a decade.

 

[Clear]

For those not familiar a consultation process is the procedure via which layoffs are staggered out over time in order to skirt UK employment law. Basically if you only sack a certain number of people at a time, there are less legal hoops to jump through.

 

[acm2000]

Team17 put out consistently cool little games but moving to external QA seems to be pretty normal these days for companies this size

 

[mansoor1980]

 

[UnNamed]

Team17 is a publishing-only company now IIRR. Pretty surprising since they were born as "indie" developer during the Amiga era.

 

[ByWatterson]

Team17 put out consistently cool little games but moving to external QA seems to be pretty normal these days for companies this size

And it's only a matter of time before QA is done by bots.

 

[DenchDeckard]

So sad, they are based close to me

 

[STARSBarry]

It's funny because they publish alot of solid indie titles that tend to review highly and have interesting concepts, I own a fair few. Wonder what's caused this, I remember that awful worms NFT push they tried to have awhile ago, I'm assuming the CEO wasted millions in trend chasing and produced nothing.

 

[acm2000]

It's funny because they publish alot of solid indie titles that tend to review highly and have interesting concepts, I own a fair few. Wonder what's caused this, I remember that awful worms NFT push they tried to have awhile ago, I'm assuming the CEO wasted millions in trend chasing.

it literally says what the cause is in the OP, moving to outsourced QA instead of internal.

 

[Nitty_Grimes]

Long live Alien Breed and Project X.

 

[Mephisto40]

Long live Alien Breed and Project X.

And Superfrog

 

[Mibu no ookami]

https://kotaku.com/overcooked-worms-nft-scam-rich-ceo-hell-let-loose-team1-1848516630

 

[Knightime_X]

QA positions have the absolute lowest job security rates.
Expect to get laid off 99.99% of the time, no matter where you go.

Especially if it's not a deployable agency.

 

[Reizo Ryuu]

QA positions have the absolute lowest job security rates.
Expect to get laid off 99.99% of the time, no matter where you go.

Especially if it's not a deployable agency.

That's not true, I work for a SaaS company and we recently had to go through a bunch of lay offs, but nobody from QA or support was affected because are critical for the daily operations; it was mostly managers/product/design that got the axe.

 

[Magic Carpet]

I see Worms W.M.D: Mobilize $6.99 on my new iPhone. Maybe I should help them out a bit? Mobile is the new future.

 

[KyoZz]

They did something awesome with WMD, and instead of capitalizing on what the fans love, THEY MADE A FUCKING BATTLE ROYALE.
Of course this would result in layoff.

 

[Knightime_X]

That's not true, I work for a SaaS company and we recently had to go through a bunch of lay offs, but nobody from QA or support was affected because are critical for the daily operations; it was mostly managers/product/design that got the axe.

In general qa is not a stable position.
You never really hear someone say they held the same qa job for 15+ years.
Maybe 0.05% at best

 

[Reizo Ryuu]

In general qa is not a stable position.
You never really hear someone say they held the same qa job for 15+ years.

I've never heard someone say they've held the same job for 15+ years; if there's no growth path in your company you're working for the wrong company or are ok with complacency.

Anyway I digress, the point was you said no matter where you go, but that is simply not true for a business where they are critical for daily operations, like ones with a lot of B2B customer contact like SaaS companies.

 

[Knightime_X]

I've never heard someone say they've held the same job for 15+ years; if there's no growth path in your company you're working for the wrong company or are ok with complacency.

Anyway I digress, the point was you said no matter where you go, but that is simply not true for a business where they are critical for daily operations, like ones with a lot of B2B customer contact like SaaS companies.

When it comes to gaming QA is almost aways 1st to be laid off.

QA for medicine and machinery is far more reliable than bug testing in gaming.
Gaming being key here.

 

[Dream-Knife]

Team 17 publishes a ton of bangers. Hell Let Loose, Blasphemous, Dredge, etc.

I don't think I've played anything they have made specifically though.

 

[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

Full extent of Team17 cuts threaten third of the company - sources

Team17 is poised to lay off up to 91 people - a third of the company - as part of its major restructuring programme, Eu…

www.eurogamer.net

Team17 is poised to lay off up to 91 people - a third of the company - as part of its major restructuring programme, Eurogamer can reveal.

The publisher of Worms, Dredge and Hell Let Loose confirmed it was planning to make redundancies earlier this month, after Eurogamer broke news that extensive cuts were being made to Team17's QA department in favour of outsourcing work elsewhere.

But the job losses go much further than those at risk in QA, Eurogamer understands, with staff across a wide range of departments affected - including those employed in Team17's marketing, usability, customer service, IT and HR teams

So deep are the cuts that Eurogamer has been contacted by developers working on games set to be published by Team17 that have been left concerned about the company's ability to continue working on their project due to the sheer numbers of people likely to be made redundant, and the knowledge and skills being lost.

 

[bitbydeath]

Lots of good IP’s with these guys. Nintendo could make great use of them if they knew how to write a check.

 

[Duchess]

I remember back in the Amiga days how any time a Team 17 game came out, you knew it was going to be a banger.

 

[xrnzaaas]

Sad news to hear about the major job cuts. It's kind of a shame that they don't really make games themselves anymore, especially if you remember their glorious Amiga days. I will admit though I like buying the games they publish, they have good instincts in picking which titles to support as a publisher. Only this year I enjoyed Dredge and console release of Trepang2. Keep going guys.