The earthquake Hardsuit Labs continues: after last week he announced that he is no longer working on Vampire: The Masquerade-Bloodlines 2 (here the complete news), in these hours several members of the development team are testifying a wave of layoffs by the management.
In particular, the announcement comes from the now ex-narrative designer Anna Webster, who said that Hardsuit's layoffs would have particularly affected the narrative sector, completely decimated.
As already stated in our reconstruction of the troubled story of Bloodlines 2 (here the link), Hardsuit's narrative sector had already been hit hard last summer through Brian Mitsoda and Cara Ellison's departure from the project, two of the figures who had previously worked on the first Bloodlines (2004).
We obviously do not know the reasons for these layoffs. On the one hand, the explanation could be quite simple: it appears evident that for Hardsuit the closure of the Bloodlines 2 project also implies a reformulation of internal resources, and that a restructuring of the creative apparatus (central in an action-rpg, but not within other productions) may be necessary.
On the other hand, the case of Mitsoda and Ellison would suggest that the leaders of the Seattle development team were not satisfied with the performance of this sector, and that therefore mass layoffs may have deeper and more complex reasons.
At this point we can not help but wait and see how the situation will evolve, maybe through testimonials from former Hardsuit Labs members who can tell their version of this complex story.
Meanwhile, the fate of Vampire: The Masquerade-Bloodlines 2 still appears very uncertain.
