Harry Potter title Hogwarts Legacy has sold more than 24 million copies to date.
18.01.2024 - 13:19 / gameranx.com / Behaviour Interactive / Interactive
Independent Canadian studio Behaviour Interactive has reportedly been hit with layoffs in its Montreal headquarters.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, Kotaku has confirmed through their own sources that their head Montreal offices laid off 45 employees, across different departments. Behaviour Interactive has yet to officially announce or confirm the layoffs, but a former employee has chimed in.
While we know that this is part of an ongoing wave of video game industry layoffs that started last year, this one hurts particularly hard, and is also somewhat unique. Behaviour Interactive is not owned by a larger conglomerate, such as Activision, Electronic Arts, or Embracer Group.
Founded in 1992 as Megatoon, Behaviour Interactive has managed to survive these past few decades as a completely independent game studio, mostly doing contract work for bigger publishers.
Today, we know Behaviour Interactive as the studio that conceived of Dead by Daylight, and by doing so, invented the asymmetrical horror multiplayer genre. But some of the contract games they had worked on through the years include the likes of Bugs Bunny & Taz: Time Busters, Spider-Man: Friend or Foe, support work for titles like Wet and Mercenaries 2, and a sea of licensed games.
Most recently, the studio released the boldly experimental Meet Your Maker last year. Meet Your Maker tasks players with building outposts filled with traps, while taking on outposts created by other players.
In spite of the dim prospects in the industry lately, 2023 was filled with a lot of activity for the company, so this sudden hit of layoffs was so surprising. Among other things, Behaviour opened a new studio in Cornwall called Behaviour UK – South, and acquired two other developers, Sockmonkey Studios and Codeglue.
Behaviour had also secured a deal with Blumhouse Pictures to make a Dead by Daylight film, with James Wan’s Atomic Monster producing. On top of all that, Behaviour earned a lot of goodwill among fans and in the industry when they announced they abolished crunch in their company in 2019.
But because Behaviour Interactive has yet to even confirm the news, we don’t have clarity for the reason behind the layoffs. It is possible that this is not, as is the case with other game studios, because of adverse economic or financial conditions. For example, companies will lay off employees found guilty of misconduct, or if said employees are in conflict with the rest of the company. But we only provide these as examples, and won’t speculate on the specifics with Behaviour’s situation here.
GameRanx wishes the best for Behaviour’s outgoing employees and we hope they can find new placement still in the games industry.
Harry Potter title Hogwarts Legacy has sold more than 24 million copies to date.
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Another developer has joined the increasingly long list of companies in the games industry that have companies that have initiated layoffs in the early weeks of 2024, continuing the brutal waves of job cuts that devastated the industry the entirety of last year.
About 20 years ago, a travel company declared this Monday just gone, the 15th, to be the most depressing day of the year. They call it Blue January. Enter yet more studio layoffs. 2023's trend continues with Dead By Daylight developer Behaviour Interactive getting rid of about 45 staff, per Kotaku, while CI Games has laid off 10% of its workforce, including from Lords Of The Fallen studio Hexworks and Sniper Ghost Warrior studio Underdog (via GI.Biz).
Canadian developer Behaviour Interactive has joined the ranks of games industry companies cutting their employee numbers.