Firaxis Games, the studio that most recently released Marvel’s Midnight Suns, has reportedly now been hit with layoffs. Following the release of Midnight Suns at the end of 2022, 2K Games parent company Take-Two Interactive later went on to say that the strategy title was a “commercial flop.” And while Firaxis has already announced that it’s now working on its next project, it seems like the underperformance of Midnight Suns has now led to layoffs at the company.
Originally reported by Axios, it was said that roughly 30 developers at Firaxis were laid off this past day on Tuesday, May 30. 2K itself ended up confirming the cuts when a representative from the publisher said that these layoffs were done to provide a “sharpening of focus, enhancements of efficiencies, and an alignment of our talent against our highest priorities.” The layoffs also come about only a few months after Take-Two Interactive announced that it would be making various cuts across the entire company.
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Perhaps the saddest part of these job losses hitting Firaxis is that Marvel’s Midnight Suns reviewed quite well across the board. Currently, the game sits at a solid 83/100 aggregate score on Metacritic, which isn’t too shabby whatsoever. For whatever reason, though, this acclaim didn’t lead to high sales for Midnight Suns, which now seems to have led to Firaxis getting slimmed down just a bit.
As mentioned, Firaxis itself is already in the process of working on its next title which should be Civilization VII. Teased earlier this year, Firaxis informed fans that it was beginning to develop the next mainline entry in the long-running Civilization franchise. Details on this game are still very sparse (Firaxis hasn’t even properly referred to it as Civilization VII) but considering that Civilization VI was such a big hit for the studio, it’s not surprising to see the developer now return to an IP that will likely generate more money.
How do you feel about Firaxis suffering these layoffs in the wake of Marvel’s Midnight Suns? And did you happen to play Midnight Suns for yourself? Let me know either down in the comments or hit me up on Twitter at @MooreMan12.
