Surgeon Simulator developer Bossa Studios has laid off one-third of its staff

Surgeon Simulator developer Bossa Studios has laid off one-third of its staff, it’s confirmed.

GamesIndustry.biz sources shared a list of 19 developers that are currently being affected by the redundancy measures. According to the report, these redundancies include QA and production staff.

The company is currently developing Lost Skies, a “cooperative survival adventure for 1–6 players set amongst the clouds.”

In a statement provided to GI, studio co-founder Henrique Olifier called the situation a “perfect storm of events,” citing the high number of quality AAA releases in September which he claims caused funding issues.

“Resulting from this blue moon situation, we had to make the difficult decision to reshape the studio to reflect the position we find ourselves in at the end of this year, focusing all our efforts now on Lost Skies. This means we find ourselves in the heartbreaking position of having to let roughly one third of the studio go – amongst them, some of our closest colleagues.”

Prior to Lost Skies, Bossa Studios worked on popular titles such as Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread, both of which gained huge popularity thanks to the games being regularly featured by popular YouTube content creators.

Olifer continued: “While we are doing our utmost to support them, we would appreciate any help our industry peers can give in spreading the word about these great people – or even better, hiring them as part of your team. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a better game development professional than one of these Bossians, whom we’ll vouch for without hesitation.

“We often say that making games is hard, but nothing is harder than seeing people you admire being let go. Ultimately, we tried our very best to avoid being in this position, and we’re truly sorry for where we have landed.”

This latest round of redundancies continues an incredibly difficult run for the games industry, which has seen jobs cut around the world.

Job losses across the games industry were widespread in 2023. Companies impacted by layoffs last year included Embracer, Xbox Game Studios, Epic Games, Sony Interactive Entertainment, CD Projekt, Unity, Ubisoft, Riot Games, Blizzard, Crystal Dynamics, BioWare, Striking Distance, Team17, Frontier Developments, Telltale Games, Digital Extremes, Amazon and Digital Bros.