In a somewhat surprising move, CCP has announced that two of its offices are being shed by the company. The two offices in question are the Newcastle office responsible for VR titles like Valkyrie, and the Atlanta support office. These offices are being sold and closed respectively. The move will affect about 100 staff at CCP. This includes another 30 staff at the main CCP office in Iceland. It looks like CCP Logibro, CCP Community Developer, may be one of those affected.
And for those wondering what happened with the $30 million investment in VR, CCP broke even for that investment back in March.
It’s obvious why this reshuffle is happening to anyone paying attention though. The VR titles CCP has released other than Valkyrie, such as Sparc and Gunjack had limited success overall. Steamcharts reveals a pretty dismal player population for the non-VR EVE: Valkyrie. It’s worth noting that the reincarnation of DUST 514, Project Nova, is unaffected and still in development.
We’re now a month in and we’re seeing between 10 and 20 players running the nonVR game on steam. As a point of comparison, Lawbreakers, a huge project led by industry giant Cliff Bleszinski, is widely considered a flop for hosting less then 100 players at the same time.
With regards to EVE, it’s kind of bittersweet that this puts us in a more solid position going forward, as a lot more focus is back on EVE Online, its services and all the technology and support around it.
The EVE Online development team was not impacted at all by these changes, and remains the same size, working toward the same goals and features that have already been announced.
We still have very big plans for EVE Online, and everything we’ve announced, plus more, is still going ahead, so there shouldn’t be any concerns from our pilots in that respect. – CCP Falcon, EVE Online Community Manager
From the statement CCP is shelving all future developments in the current VR titles. I’m sure the newer titles will be put on a barebones structure to keep already developed titles on life support since it’s relatively cheap to do that, and we’ve heard that some staff will be reshuffled amongst remaining CCP holdings.
So, that leaves the mobile market and FPS products as CCPs major upcoming releases. Here’s hoping that Projects Nova and Aurora more profitable than their VR endeavors.
