150 job losses hit Goldeneye developer Eurocom

Goldeneye and work-for-hire developer Eurocom has laid off around 150 staff.

As rerpoted by Games Industry, the studio has a workforce of around 200, which is set to be reduced to just 50 staff.

Studio director Hugh Binns blamed the “steep decline” in demand for console games, as well as a number of projects falling through in the last week, as the reason for the mass layoffs.

Eurocom will now move its focus to mobile games development in future.

"Eurocom are undertaking a restructuring which I regret to say has meant we’ve made the majority of our workforce redundant today," read a statement from Binns.

"This includes many very experienced, talented and highly skilled employees, and we’d like to thank them all for your hard work and efforts.

"We’ve fought to try and save as many jobs as possible, but the steep decline in demand for console games, culminating in a number of console projects falling through in the last week, left us with no option. Eurocom has retained a core staff of just under 50 employees and will be focusing mainly on mobile opportunities moving forward."

Based in Derby, UK, Eurocom is one of the UK’s longest-standing studios, having been formed in 1988. The company has developed numerous console games during its long history, most recently Goldeney 007 for the Wii, a Reloaded version of the game for PS3, Xbox 360, Rio and Disney Universe.

Its latest games 007 Legends, its only title this year, received a poor critical reception upon release last month, garnering an average Metacritic score of 45 on Xbox 360.