The original claims were made by a former CIG employee who then locked his Twitter account (now known as X). Those claims I totally disregard as uncredible and possibly the result of a bitter former employee looking to strike back at his former employer.
What I do find credible is Henderson's reporting that his sources indicate up to 12 employees, mostly from the QA department, were let go. Henderson has earned some credibility with his reporting on the layoffs at the beginning of 2024 at CIG's North American offices as well as the CitizenCon crunch story at the beginning of October. In other words, Henderson has more credibility than some random Twitter user with an axe to grind who locks away his allegations so others cannot check the story.
I find the story of the layoffs credible from a different direction. CIG is currently on pace to bring in as much money this year as the company did in 2022. According to CIG's financial report for 2022, the company turned a profit of $1.3 million with somewhere between 15%-20% less staff than today. Since employee costs make up a huge portion of the budget, figure overall costs are 15%-20% higher in 2024 than 2022, even after the approximately 10% force reduction at the beginning of the year.
With cash shop sales apparently plateauing between $110-$120 million per year, CIG probably needs to cut costs to stay in business. But cutting QA? From everything I've read and watched, one thing not done to excess is quality assurance. I realize CIG's customer base does a lot of QA work on Star Citizen, but these cuts may cut too close to the bone in the long-run. Then again, Chris Roberts may still be salty about what happened during the Squadron 42 demo at CitizenCon.
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