Earlier today, news broke that Eidos Montreal, the developer behind Deus Ex: Human Revolution and, more recently, the Thief reboot, had laid off a significant portion of its staff. Thief publisher Square Enix then confirmed the news, saying that 27 employees had been let go.

With Thief debuting to a middling reception from critics and fans, the obvious go-to assumption for these layoffs is that they are a direct response to those reviews. But, as Square Enix points out in their official statement, layoffs are common after shipping any release. Developers bring on new talent in the months before going gold, and then, without much to do post-release aside from bug fixes and DLC, they typically let some staff go. Still, anytime someone loses his or her job, regardless of form or tradition, it’s tough.

That being said, Eidos Montreal claims they will do their best to find homes for the recently displaced developers, either on a new project within the company like the follow-up to Deus Ex: HR or some unannounced project. There are also several job listing spreadsheets circulating the Internet for these folks to take a look. The game development industry has time and time again rallied behind their fellow developers and done their best to help folks find new jobs. It’s what makes the industry so great, even if there is an ugly side to it.

The fact of the matter is expectations are exceedingly high when it comes to sales success, and most games that fail to generate positive buzz and review scores end up falling into the “failure” category. Previous Square Enix releases like Hitman: Absolution and Tomb Raider, for example, were deemed failures in certain respects, and those games actually had positive word of mouth and decent sales. But breaking even isn’t as easy as it once was, especially considering the amount of time, money, and effort that goes into making a triple-A release these days. Thief, for example, had been in development for almost five years and had gone through plenty of changes over that time.

Again, our hearts go out to those who were laid off.

Even though reviews have been so-so, do you still want to see more from the Thief universe?

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Source: Kotaku