'Mafia III' Developer Hit with Massive Layoffs
Hangar 13, the developer behind 2016's open-world crime sim "Mafia III," was hit with massive layoffs recently despite the financial success of its debut title.
Kotaku reports that 2K Games, Hangar 13's parent company and the publisher of "Mafia III," gave them a statement confirming the news.
"2K can confirm that there have been staff reductions at Hangar 13 in order to ensure that the studio's resources are properly aligned with its long-term development plans," a representative told them. "These reductions will not influence 2K's ability to create and deliver its products that are currently in development. We never take these matters lightly, and are working with the affected employees to support them and explore potential opportunities throughout our organization."
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There has been no official number so far with regard to how many people were let go, but sources say that a significant portion of the team are now unemployed.
"Mafia III" came out in 2016 and tells the story of Lincoln Clay, a Vietnam war veteran out to get revenge for the death of his family. It is an open-world action game in similar vein to the popular "Grand Theft Auto" franchise.
The game is notable because it once set the record as the fastest-selling title in 2K Games' history having shipped 4.5 million copies within its first week alone. However, despite the number of copies it moved, it was a very heavily criticized game. Sitting at an average score of 68 percent on its best-performing platform, critics lambasted the game's repetitive gameplay, dull open world, and, perhaps most importantly, the number of technical bugs that the game launched with.
Within a day of the game's launch, YouTuber CrowbCat released a video that showcases several of these bugs and it quickly went viral within the gaming community. As it stands, it currently has over 3 million views, just a million or two short of how many copies the game actually sold.
