Homeworld 3 Devs in Trouble; 41 People Laid Off
Blackbird Interactive, the studio working on Homeworld, was forced to lay off dozens of employees.
Bad things are happening in studio Blackbird Interactive, known for Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak and Hardspace: Shipbreaker.
- The studio was forced to lay off 41 employees.
- Gamers waiting for Homeworld 3 may be comforted by the fact that these reductions are unlikely to negatively affect this RTS.
- The layoffs are due to the cancelation of several unannounced projects, and it was mainly the developers who worked on them that the studio had to say goodbye to.
Blackbird Interative was founded in 2007. The team's first work was 2016's Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak. This game is currently available for free on Epic Games Store. It's hard not to suspect that the studio decided to partner with Epic Games in order to provide itself with a quick cash injection, needed in difficult times.
In 2020, the studio launched the early access to Hardspace: Shipbreaker on PC, and version 1.0 was released last year. Soon after, the game lived to see a port to consoles. Currently, the team is working on Homeworld 3, which is expected to hit PC next year.
In recent years, it has been apparent that the studio has tried to diversify its source of revenue. The developer, together with Mojang, has created Minecraft Legends, which debuted this April on PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S and PlayStation 5. In turn, in 2022 Blackbird Interactive released Crossfire: Legion, a spin-off of the popular online RTS. So you can see that in order to ensure greater financial stability, the team began to develop games licensed from other brands. Unfortunately, several of such projects were cancelled, forcing layoffs.
