A wave of layoffs has covered the Polish Artificer studio. According to Kotaku sources, on January 31, Artificer fired 25 people — about half of the staff. In the coming months, she intends to cut another 10-12 employees.
Showgunners
The studio will carry out the second round of cuts after finalizing a new, as yet unannounced game.
Artificer opened in 2019 and two years later became part of the publisher Devolver Digital. The studio released its first Showgunners game, which it initially planned to call Homicidal All-Stars, in May 2023 on PC. She received a "very positive" rating on Steam — 93% of the 849 reviews were positive — but failed to achieve a large online following. According to SteamDB, at its peak, 533 people were playing Showgunners at the same time, and at the time of writing the online game news, there are two people at all.
The dynamics of online Showgunners on Steam
Neither Artificer nor Devolver Digital commented on the information about the cuts to the media, but it is confirmed by posts by former studio employees on social networks. In particular, level designer Bartosz Danielak and narrative designer Olga Ilukovich wrote about mass layoffs.