Now Cohort cuts staff

Looks like it won’t just be former RTW staff getting their CVs ready for a raft of last-minute recruitment events run by publishers in Scotland this week.

Nearby studio Cohort has also cut staff this week, Develop can confirm.

But the firm insists that unlike Realtime Worlds, which went into administration on Tuesday, it will live on – and still remains in business.

The studio’s most recent project is Move-compatible The Shoot for Sony.

27 staff have been given notice cutting the headcount in half.

Founder Lol Scragg told us: “With The Shoot nearing completion we’re taking steps to move back to our core business model, which is lighter and leaner in the interim periods between large publisher-led projects.”

He continued: “We are entering advanced stages of discussion with some big partners that should see us ramp up again towards the end of Q4. In the meantime, we’ll be scaling our staffing levels back in order to concentrate on some in-house projects, and focus on strengthening and improving our proprietary technologies.”

Cohort is a member of the UK government’s Investor in People scheme, which places special focus on employee relations, and says that through this it is working hard on ‘ways to ensure that staff affected by the changes are treated in the appropriate way’.