Following the recent release of Halo: Campaign Evolved, developer Halo Studios is now undergoing layoffs. One of the producers from the studio, Nick Treitman, confirmed that he was among those who have been let go from the company.
“After 6.5 years working on Halo and dodging just as many rounds of layoffs – it has finally caught up to me. I have nothing but love for Halo and the folks at the studio; this is just a tough reality in the gaming industry right now,” he wrote on LinkedIn.
Treitman was seemingly joined by Paul Morris, who confirmed that he is being let go as well following the game’s release. Morris was listed as one of the studio’s scrum masters. “Today, I learned my time at Halo Studios will be coming to an end following the successful launch of our latest game, Halo: Campaign Evolved. I know this is one of the most challenging job markets our industry has seen, and I know the road ahead won’t be easy. But I’m not done, and my purpose has not changed.”
According to Insider Gaming, software engineer Caleb Lawrence has also listed himself as being available for work on LinkedIn, but hasn’t made any post regarding his current employment status. Halo Studios itself hasn’t yet made any comments regarding the layoffs either, so details like the number of jobs affected remain unknown.
The round of layoffs comes shortly after a report indicated that Halo Studios is suffering from quite a bit of mismanagement, which even led to the cancelation of a multiplayer project that was in development. Quite a few of these issues ended up creating extra work for the development team of Halo: Campaign Evolved, which, in turn, also meant that several important deadlines were missed and expectations from leadership became unreasonable.
Among these issues was the decision of the studio to move from the older Blam engine to Unreal Engine 5. While the team was assured that assets that had already been created would carry over into Unreal Engine just fine, the developers realized that this wasn’t the case and had to start afresh in creating in-game assets. In the same timeframe, Halo Studios seemingly brought in support studio Abstraction to help with the transition, before eventually cutting ties with the studio and starting from scratch once more.
Missed deadlines would even lead to crunch in the final year of Halo: Campaign Evolved’s development, which led to the team needing to cut out planned features. This included in-engine cutscenes like the original Halo: Combat Evolved, which had to be scrapped in favor of pre-rendered cutscenes.
Rumors have indicated that Halo Studios is working on a host of new projects following the release of Halo: Campaign Evolved – a brand-new mainline entry in the franchise, a remake of Halo 2, and a new multiplayer title. No details about these have been revealed, however, and the report indicated that the new Halo game is still in its concept stages.
In the meantime, Halo: Campaign Evolved is available on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. Read our review for more details.
