Two studios reflect on how they dealt with redundancies – and what to do differently to avoid them in future

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Two game studios share their experiences with layoffs and strategies for avoiding them in the future. Spilt Milk Studios navigated publisher rejections by launching a Kickstarter and eventually rehired laid-off employees, while Aurora Punks scaled down from 50 to 20 people after rapid pandemic growth. Both studios emphasize the importance of diversified revenue streams, including work-for-hire projects and consulting, rather than relying solely on single game releases. The key lessons include maintaining multiple income sources, building sustainable team sizes, and focusing on consumer-driven revenue rather than depending entirely on publisher funding.

The painful lessons learned from layoffs

The gist of the article is basically how two studios survived layoffs by admitting they grew too fast and relied on single sources of funding.
So, as employees, we can take several lessons from this article:
<ul>
<li>Don’t rely on a single revenue source; diversify your income.</li>
<li>Avoid over-extending yourself during “good times.”</li>
<li>Prefer slow, sustainable growth over rapid expansion.</li>
<li>Keep multiple paths open so one failed bet doesn’t sink you.</li>
</ul>
And we must stop being more scrupulous than the companies we work for.

“…rehired those made redundant.” Guess they weren’t redundant to begin with were they?

They like every saved penny/cents they make and don’t want make it available. Except when they need some competency or toy, but if career doesn’t shine, it could allow other circumstances to happen like some proven studios make it more successful until next layoffs if market ways think so. But if other shit happens, tools and project is not accomplished and next game is maybe old remake but earnings and profit to maintain it including cloud various costs, bug fixes and maintain the proven way of development in unstable customer interest, don’t seem like devices various attempt to microtransactions when there is some law enforcement to maintain kids out of bankrupcy and father pocket, saving are everywhere including frugalware way of shine, career and industry could say that costs are everywhere and thing to consider could blow mind and full of choices to think so.