Chris Roberts On The Cloud Imperium Layoffs

Yesterday Cloud Imperium Games founder and CEO Chris Roberts published a "Letter From The Chairman." Outside the annual CitizenCon event held every October, these posts are the main ways Roberts communicates with the fanbase for Squadron 42 and Star Citizen. Posted near the end of all the game related updates, Roberts addressed the layoffs in CIG's studios in the United States.

At the top of the interest scale, Roberts confirmed that Todd Papy, the former Persistent Universe Live Director, was fired for not relocating back to the U.K.

As part of this reorganization, we sadly waved goodbye to the Persistent Universe Live Director, Todd Papy as he had moved back to the US from the UK last year for family reasons, and after much soul searching, I determined that we cannot afford to have this role remote from the main team in Manchester for a good portion of the year. It is a sad moment, as Todd worked diligently for the last 9 years on Star Citizen, making many important contributions and providing excellent leadership of his teams. I wish him the best of luck and look forward to seeing what he does next.

Some might have thought Papy would have received a better send-off, but Roberts finally said some nice things about a key player in the development of Star Citizen while the main effort of the company was finishing Squadron 42. Rich Tyrer, the game director for Squadron 42, will also take over Papy's role. I will note that Roberts waited until SQ42 was declared "feature complete" and the developers from Star Citizen began to return to work on the MMO before firing Papy.

The more interesting tidbit in the Letter From The Chairman concerned the restructuring occurring in the United States. Game development in Los Angeles has ended.

As part of this, we made the difficult decision to ask the Los Angeles development team, which had increasingly been providing support for the main development teams based in Manchester, to relocate to join other teams, primarily in Manchester, but also in Austin and Montreal. Los Angeles, while shrinking, will still be an important office for the company, but one focusing on a business support role with Marketing, Finance, Legal and HR.

I am not sure the technical terminology, but for all practical purposes, CIG shut down its game studio in Los Angeles. Roberts noted that he himself has moved from Los Angeles to Austin.

I don't follow Star Citizen closely, but from everything I read up until now, the known layoffs were occurring in the Austin studio. Those laid off due to restructuring included Austin QA lead Vincent Sinatra, Austin senior QA analyst Andrew Rexroth, and level designer Dane Kubicka, also from Austin.

With the closing of the Los Angeles studio, I have to wonder if people in the Austin office were laid off in order to have space for developers willing to relocate from Los Angeles. Or, signaling worse financial news, the staff laid off in Austin were part of another restructuring move.

CIG is the company that just keeps feeding me stories about which to write. But I had to write about this one, if only because the game studio in Los Angeles is no more. And the closure also explains why this year's CitizenCon is being held in Manchester and not southern California in 2024.