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UPDATE 18:20 November 3:
Perfect World have now responded to the claims confirming that they have laid off most of the staff and also revealed that they have shuttered Torchlight and Hob developer Runic Games.
In a statement given to Kotaku, the company said ‘The staff reduction at Motiga and the closure of Runic Games Seattle were unrelated.’ but confirmed ‘A core team of developers remains at Motiga, who will work with us to support the game and its players, including moving full steam ahead with the upcoming November update and future content. We cannot thank everyone enough for their contributions in making Gigantic the outstanding experience it is today.’
‘Perfect World Entertainment recently closed the Seattle office of Runic Games as part of the company’s continued strategy to focus on online games as a service. We’re grateful to the team for all of their hard work bringing incredible experiences like Torchlight, Torchlight II and Hob to life.’
Gigantic and Torchlight, Torchlight 2 and Hob will continue to be available to players for the foreseeable future.
ORIGINAL STORY FOLLOWS: Motiga, developer of free-to-play MOBA-shooter hybrid Gigantic appears to have closed its doors this afternoon as per a couple of tweets from now former employees and later confirmed by founder and CEO Chris Chung.
All things must end, some great people are now looking for some jobs, godspeed friends <3 #motiga pic.twitter.com/ZClxeS9Mtd
— Thor (@ThorDG) November 2, 2017
In a statement to Destructoid, Chung said the reason for the closure was a corporate one: ‘It was a budgetary decision at the highest level. Perfect World as a public company has a profitability goal and they decided to cut parts of the company that were not profitable. In short, Gigantic was not making enough revenue.’Â
As for the future of the Xbox One and PC hero shooter, Chung says ‘Gigantic will be left at the hands of a maintenance team composed of few dedicated folks at Motiga. They are [an] awesome group of people that will be working on the game until some time in the future when it doesn’t make sense anymore.’
Perfect World for their part are yet to comment at the time of writing.
We wish the best of luck to all those affected by the closure.
