THQ Lays off Employees for Strategic Purposes

THQ has reported that they had laid off 20 employees from their marketing, and production teams. This is what THQ spokesperson had to say regarding this lay off, “THQ confirms a realignment has taken place in the company’s marketing and production groups in Agoura Hills. This change is reflective of the company’s ongoing strategy to create a more focused, agile, and digitally-oriented organization. Less than 3% of the company’s global workforce was impacted, and no development teams or projects were affected by this action.”.

The lay off report was leaked out by an email that was posted  on Twitter by 3D Realms founder George Broussard.

“All,

Days like today are not easy for any of us. The worst part of restructuring is clearly the restructuring. But this is a necessary part of improving and rebuilding. It is never easy to see friends and colleagues leave the company. Nobody in management, including me, takes these decisions lightly, but we must all continue to remain focused on driving the business forward and look towards our future.

As you know, it is my vision for THQ to enter into new markets though new distribution methodologies, and reaching those consumers in those markets will take a different approach to marketing. It is also vitally important that we improve our production methodologies and oversight so that we are shipping better titles, on budget and on time.

In our quest to make these changes, I have been looking at the Marketing and Production structure at HQ along with the heads of those departments, Rich Williams and Ron Moravek. We have identified changes that need to be made and thus today we reduced the size of these departments by about 20 individuals.

It is worth pointing out that none of the development teams are effected, and we do not anticipate the reduction to have any impact whatsoever on the titles in production or the future scale of our output. It is also quite likely that in the long run the company will hire new individuals with different skill sets in their stead. To put this in perspective, Volition alone anticipates growing by about 20 individuals in the next 12 months. This represents a shift of resources from oversight to production, and from centralization out to the teams. I would also like to note that these two departments were largely unaffected by the January reduction, so it makes some sense that their size and capabilities do not align with the changes made elsewhere.

I am genuinely excited about both the quality of work and the innovation happening at the company right now. When I look forward to the type of games and digital experiences we will deliver over the next few years, I see a new THQ taking a new market position in a very different industry environment.

Let’s all try to keep our eyes focused on that bright future.”

Hopefully THQ manages to keep on going, they have been having a very rough time lately. Darksiders 2 was released last week with excellent reviews. THQ also has revealed the full roster for WWE 13, and is releasing the game this October.

Source – IGN