Surgeon Simulator developer suffers more layoffs, says it will "scale back" operations
"This is not a phase, it's a fundamental transformation of the games industry."
Bossa Games, the London-based company behind indie hits Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread, has announced a second wave of job losses - just a year after it previously shed a third of its staff.
In a statement posted to LinkedIn, company co-founder Henrique Olifers said Bossa had been forced to make "the painful decision to scale back" its size once more.
The company will now focus all its efforts on getting its open-world airship adventure Lost Skies out the door, before "reshap[ing] into small teams working independently on novel game ideas brought to the players as early as possible".
It's unclear how many staff have been impacted by these latest layoffs, though Olifers wrote that the changes meant the studio would be "saying very difficult goodbyes to extremely talented and treasured colleagues, truly some of the best people in the industry, who have been part of our journey for a long time".
"We wish we had found a way of navigating this turmoil without resorting to the decision of scaling back or teams," Olifers continued, "but unfortunately we've failed in this endeavour."
The co-CEO blamed the action on a "fundamental transformation of the games industry, a reshape of how games are made and by what kinds of teams", though did not elaborate further how Bossa had been affected in particular.
At the start of 2024, Bossa was thought to employ around 60 people, before layoffs saw 19 jobs lost which Olifers blamed on a "perfect storm of events" at the time: higher development costs, funding delays, and a tougher market for indie games.
It's been four years since Bossa last shipped a game - I Am Fish. It remains best known for Surgeon Simulator, which it launched in 2013 and followed up with various other versions for smartphones, Switch and VR.
Bossa had previously received funding from NetEase, the Chinese giant that is currently pulling back from many of its gaming studio investments across the globe.
In 2022, Bossa sold the rights to I Am Bread and Surgeon Simulator to US indie publisher TinyBuild, generating a reported $3m.