THQ 'axing' 200 employees to leave, pretty please

by Alexander Sliwinski { May 7th 2008 at 12:00PM }

With THQ announcing a $35.3 million dollar loss this past fiscal year, it's time for some people to get the ax. Not executives, mind you, but the little people. Gamasutra reports that CEO Brian Farrell stated 200 people will lose their jobs, but that most of them are employees working on "last gen" platforms like the PS2. On the bright side, the company plans to add about 300 new employees this fiscal year to "key studios" working on "key products."

The culling may have already started after rumors last week that members of THQ's Rainbow and Sandblast studios were laid off. To prevent people from losing their jobs in the future, CFO Colin Slade says that THQ is instituting a four-stage greenlight process to ensure better quality (and apparently better sales) from the publisher's titles.

[Via GameDaily]

Tags: ax, firing, jobs, thq

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Henry @ May 7th 2008 12:15PM

Surely they could re-train some of the employees they are making redundant, and move them to the 'key studios'.

Yuccadude @ May 7th 2008 12:19PM

Eye see what you did there.

matt @ May 7th 2008 12:24PM

Typical, the worthless execs keep their million dollar jobs while 200 employees making $40-100k (who are actually doing something for the company) are losing theirs.

JJ Rooster @ May 7th 2008 12:29PM

It's a sad truth that the very execs who develop a company plan that fails get to cut the staff they directed to carry it out. I remember a boss who told me that things were bad, and before he got the axe he would be pushing people out in front of him. Nice!

Tim The Enchanter @ May 7th 2008 1:09PM

Sadly typical.

mike_p @ May 7th 2008 1:18PM

Must just be just in that area. I went to a THQ meet at my uni (MMU) and over here in the UK, they need people badly.

Juice Games in particular.

nojok3 @ May 7th 2008 1:21PM

I like the title

Platinum_Skeet @ May 7th 2008 1:26PM

Truth is they fired the Saints Row team because they couldn't compete with GTAIV...

Rocketboy @ May 7th 2008 2:18PM

No, it was because the musical was better than the game.

markhill66 @ May 7th 2008 3:59PM

Luckily, I sold off all of my THQ (THQI) stock last night because it was consistently falling every day. Today, it's down $1.15. I'm thinking about replacing it with Midway.

LAWL @ May 7th 2008 4:47PM

Well,removing the "last gen" dev teams sounds obvious by now,but baning that people when thy gota get new people for the "current gen" ,a bit mechanical IMO.
As someone with common sense said,retraining them could fix that.
Or not,IDK.
Yay for the system.