2K Games Confirms Layoffs At 'Civilization VII' Developer Firaxis

2K Games, the parent company of Civilization developer Firaxis, confirmed that it laid off an undisclosed number of employees just months after Civilization VII’s release.

It was originally discovered that layoffs had taken place after writer Emma Kidwell announced on LinkedIn she had been let go. She posted, “I was affected by the layoffs at Firaxis, and am open to full time writing work at your studio. I'm an incredibly adaptable writer who wrote on Civilization VII and Marvel's Midnight Suns during my (nearly) 5 years at the studio, and I encourage you to keep an eye out for my former colleagues who were also laid off.”

A spokesman for 2K Games confirmed to Rock Paper Shotgun the company laid off an undisclosed number of employees. He said, “"We can confirm there was a staff reduction today at Firaxis Games, as the studio restructures and optimizes its development process for adaptability, collaboration, and creativity.”

The layoffs come around seven months after the release of Civilization VII, which failed to surpass the peak player counts of Civilization VI. The game only hit a peak player count of 84,558 and in the last 24 hours only managed to hit a peak of 7,611.

In contrast Civilization VI hit a peak concurrent player count of 162,657 shortly after it was released in October 2016. The game’s 24-hour peak of 43,091 is also nearly 6x higher than Civilization VII.

Even Civilization V had a higher peak concurrent player count. It hit a peak of 91,363 in July 2013. Also, the game had more than double the 24-hour peak of Civilization VII. It clocked in at 16,378.

The game’s poor performance and subsequent layoffs are not surprising. The game was lampooned from a variety of different angles. It was roasted multiple times for its DEI agenda where it depicted a black female woman leading a group of east Asians in a promotional trailer for the game.

It was also roasted when they announced that Harriet Tubman would be a playable leader.

At least one player was banned from the game’s Steam forums and accused of racism for criticizing this decision.

On top of this DEI agenda, numerous players indicated that the core mechanics of the game had been radically altered and had morphed the game into something else other than Civilization.

One person wrote, “If I wanted to play humankind, I'd play humankind. I I wanna play civilization I'm damn sure not playing 7.”

Another posted, “They would need to completely rework so many core elements of the gameplay to actually save this game. I just don't see it happening :/”

“4 months later and they still have not been able to fix most of the critical bugs,” wrote one. “At this point I'm not confident that they can fix the bugs and they seriously hurt game play. Almost every game I run into a bug where I have to shutdown the game and the frustration over that is enough that I usually don't go back to the game that day and way a day or 2 to turn and finish the game. They're destroyed the one more turn fell of all of it's predecessors.”

Another reviewed, “I'm another ‘since Civ 1’ player. Have owned and played every version. Civ 7 is an admirable try to evolve the game but it's the least enjoyable version I've played yet. The different ‘Eras’ and complete break and short era length and complete focus on the same goals every time make every game feel the same and redundant. The map size limit of Standard is horrible too. It feels like a fancy mobile version. Please fix it.”

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