Blue Omega Entertainment Lays Off Majority of Team

Blue Omega Entertainment, the creators of the Codemasters-published Xbox 360, PS3, and PC game Damnation, laid off its entire staff today right after the game’s completion.

A Twitter account under the name of Geoff Rowland, claiming to be a developer for Blue Omega Entertainment, broke the story on June 23. “The entire Blue Omega team was laid off today (well, starting Friday). If anyone has job openings, send them my way and I’ll pass them on,” Rowland wrote.

Rowland confirmed that the entire staff was laid off on Wednesday afternoon with the Gamasutra site, saying: “I can’t comment on anything due to existing [non-disclosure agreements]. The majority of the team was laid off shortly after submitting our first iPhone game (Attack of the Dust Bunnies) to Apple. It’s a really fun game with a sense of humor and I hope that it sells well.”

“I think the hope is if sales of the iPhone game go well, the team will get back together to develop smaller scoped games. While it is difficult to have been laid off in this economy, I think it is more difficult to no longer be working with the awesome team we had at [Blue Omega Entertainment].”

The layoffs are the results of a combination of strained relationships during the completion of Damnation, and two suits against subcontractors working on Damnation in January and February this year. Blue Omega withdrew one suit, against subcontractor Point of View, just days after filing it, but still open is a suit filed in February against Velvetelvis. Blue Omega claims in that suit that Velvetelvis did subpar work that led to Blue Omega missing deadlines.