FuturLab has laid off seven employees following the cancellation of a project unrelated to PowerWash Simulator.
CEO Kirsty Rigden confirmed in a statement to This Week in Video Games that it cancelled the project “while in pre-production, as it would have cost us more than it was projected to make. Continuing with it wouldn’t have been a sensible decision.”
Rigden said FuturLab is “fully committed to making [PowerWash Simulator 2] the best game it can be, while prototyping new ideas for future games, [and] this has meant looking at our future plans and requirements for the studio.”
She continued: “This is awful as these are people who are super talented and many of whom have been with us a long time, and I really really appreciate them. This was not an easy or quick decision to make, but by making difficult decisions early we protect FuturLab in the future.”
When asked whether FuturLab could confirm if the employees were let go through redundancy, Rigden was “unable to divulge any further details about a confidential and legally binding process.”
Anonymous sources told This Week in Video Games that Rigden announced the project’s cancellation in late June. The project had reportedly been in development for two to three years.
One source alleged that project staff were “left hanging with no new work assigned to them for weeks.”
The seven affected employees were reportedly made redundant in July. Sources claimed that “managers and team leads were not informed that their direct reports were going to be away or why.”
A meeting was said to have been held in August, where sources allege that FuturLab COO Chris Mehers stated the studio was undergoing restructuring. In a subsequent meeting, employees were instructed not to use the term “redundancy” and refer to those affected as “the leavers.”
Employees were also reportedly told that the affected staff were not needed for PowerWash Simulator 2 and that their departure would not impact the game’s development.
Managers and team leads were allegedly “not included in choosing the affected individuals, not to give them any of the guilt,” and this approach was intended to avoid “the stress of [those affected] not knowing their job security for two weeks of the process.”
GamesIndustry.biz previously spoke to Rigden about what’s next for the studio, which included the cancelled project.
“We’ve always tried to do two projects at once… so we’ve got another game which I’m really excited about. We don’t want to just be a PowerWash studio… We’re always thinking about, ‘What else could we do?'”