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Fantasy Flight Interactive will close down in February 2020.
Board game publisher Fantasy Flight Games strengthened its digital presence back in 2017 when it opened Fantasy Flight Interactive Asmodee North America. The new studio planned to develop games and new digital experiences both adapting and based on the Fantasy Flight Games brands, as the company held a number of licensed titles including the Star Wars X-Wing series and its expansions and the Arkham Horror series.
The outfit was headed by Tim Gerritsen, who has over two decades of game development experience having worked at Sega of America, Irrational Games, and Human Head Studios (which itself coincidentally also shuttered in November last year, although the studio was swiftly taken over by Bethesda). The studio’s only project, The Lord of the Rings: Adventure Card Game, launched on Steam last August.
“It’s with great sadness that I have to report that the decision has been made to close Fantasy Flight Interactive next month,” studio head, Gerritsen, explained via a LinkedIn post (thanks, GI.biz). “I’m proud of the team and the game we’ve dedicated ourselves to for the past few years. It’s a been an amazing journey with even more amazing people.
“I’m going to do my best to get my team placed in new positions. I have programmers, designers, artists, QA staff and a producer to get placed in new roles and will do my best to do so quickly. Additionally, I’m now open to new opportunities myself since I will also be out of a job.”
A number of vacancies were subsequently shared on the announcement, to which Gerritsen replied: “Thanks everyone who has responded. I’m working with my team to put together resumes. Most want to stay in the area, but I will work with people to get them placed and reach out to do so soon.”
These latest layoffs sadly come on the back of several other closures and cutbacks we’ve seen across studios in recent months, most recently Gameloft, Amazon Game Studios and PayDay developer, Starbreeze. In a brief statement on the latter company’s official website, the firm said it had decided to make organisational changes “in order to make the organization more efficient and reduce costs”, resulting in 60 redundancies primarily from its Stockholm office.
Other recent layoffs and closures include Iron Tiger Studios, ArenaNet, Next Games, Forgotten Key, Define Human Studios, Bandai Namco Vancouver, and Trion Worlds. Telltale Games also laid off its staff in a studio closure back in September 2018.
