Krome studio closure threat â??misreportedâ??

The CEO of Australian developer Krome says the press exaggerated stories regarding the wellbeing of its Adelaide studio.

Robert Walsh says that the independent developer’s workforce will hardly be dented from any potential disruption at Adelaide.

“To put things into perspective, we have around 250 staff [altogether] and Adelaide has like 18 employees – that’s why I think the reports were pretty out of control. It’s a pretty small number.”

He said that staff affected were still on notice.

“There’s still potential for other work coming in, but things are taking a little longer,” he added. “Adelaide is still a great studio but we’ve got get the right people working on the right jobs.”

In August Develop reported that Krome’s Adelaide office was ‘facing closure’, going on information presented in a Gamespot report.

“I’ve no idea how this story got that far,” Walsh tells Develop.

“What’s real and those stories in the press are two different things. Some of the staff were on four weeks notice, but the studio’s fine.

“The thing about the press is that sometimes they exaggerate things.

“There’s still guys in Adelaide, they’re still working on projects, I don’t know how that all got out of control.”

He said the possible redundancies at Adelaide was due to the cyclical nature of the development cycle:

“We go though peaks and troughs and we came to a point when we had to look at keeping a lot of people on with no work to do, so, we realigned resources,” he said.

A Develop feature from May 2009 reported Krome to have over 400 staff. In three instances since, Krome has announced staff reduction measures (1,2,3).