Engine start-up MaxPlay lays off majority of staff, shifts focus to licensing its tech

Engine Startup MaxPlay has laid off the majority of its staff, with what remains of the San Francisco-based company now working on ways to license its technology.

MaxPlay debuted its game engine in 2015, aiming to "disrupt" the market of tools for game developers by producing a game engine for the cloud computer era. This doesn’t seem to have panned out though, and so MaxPlay laid off most of its 70 employees on September 30th.

The company’s CEO Sinjin Bain confirmed the loss of these jobs to VentureBeat, mentioning that a deal to secure more funding had fallen through, leading to the collapse of the company. VentureBeat also mention that MaxPlay had already raised $17 million.

"For a variety of reasons, more on the side of the money guys and not because of us, the transaction didn’t go through," Bain said. "At the last minute, they pulled out of their commitments and left us in a very difficult place. We had several groups looking to acquire us, and for a variety of reasons those didn’t pan out."

According to Bain, most of MaxPlay’s former employees have found new roles, and he specifically singles out Amazon’s Lumberyard and Magic Leap as new homes for several staff, and those that remain are looking at ways to monetise their codebase. Bain is confident several companies will be interested in the model.