NCSoft’s Carbine Studios axes nearly half of its workforce

The developer behind MMO Wildstar is confirmed significant job losses at its studio.

NCSoft’s Carbine Studios, which was established to develop and run Wildstar, has according to Polygon chopped over 70 jobs, amounting to around 40 per cent of its workforce. Those who remain have also been told that further job cuts should be expected in the months ahead with the game’s future very much under threat.

Wildstar’s Chinese launch has also been scrapped.

Earlier this morning, Carbine Studios completed a reorganization of its operating structure. Moving forward, the studio will focus on operating and updating WildStar as a live game in the US and Europe,” an official statement read. Unfortunately, as a result of these changes, we’ve had to reduce staff.

These cuts are directly tied to WildStar’s evolution from a product in development to a live title, to the cancelation of work to bring WildStar to China, and to the overall performance of WildStar since launch in 2014.

These kinds of decisions are exceptionally difficult. The talented and passionate professionals who are impacted by these cuts have been valuable team members and respected colleagues. We wish everyone well for the future and will be providing severance and employment search assistance.

As for WildStar, we remain committed to the game. Over the next few weeks and months we will deliver a significant update to the game, kick off a variety of community events, and continue our work on new content that we will talk more about in the near future.”

Wildstar dropped its subscription charges late last year, but the move appears to have done little to help the ailing title, questions of which have been asked since more or less after launch.