Homeworld 3 Developer Lays off 41 Employees

Developer Blackbird Interactive has announced that it has laid off more than 40 employees. The layoffs come in light of several of the studio’s upcoming projects getting cancelled. The layoffs came to light thanks to a post on LinkedIn by former technical artist at Blackbird Interactive James Marshall, who revealed that more than 40 people were laid off from the studio. A spokesperson for the studio released a statement, according to IGN, confirming that 41 employees were let go.

“We’ve had to take the unfortunate step of laying off some friends this week,” reads the statement by the spokesperson. “This year has been incredibly tough on the industry as a whole. As a result, we’ve had several unannounced projects canceled and yesterday were forced to say goodbye to 41 of our team members. As an independent studio, Blackbird Interactive has always been a close-knit team. Our top priority is helping position those affected for this next stage of their careers. We are offering a suite of extended benefits and severance to help ease this transition. No announced projects will be affected by this move, and we will continue to deliver on those games.”

Blackbird Interactive has currently been working on space-based real-time strategy game Homeworld 3, which has been getting quite a few trailers more recently leading up to the game’s February 2024 release window. The most recent trailer gave us a look at the story in Homeworld 3, focusing on the new Incarnate faction, which seems to be the primary antagonist for the game’s campaign.

The studio also revealed back in July that Homeworld 3 will be the first game in the storied franchise to feature fully-animated 3D cutscenes, as opposed to the franchise tradition of featuring highly-stylized static images with music and voiceovers.