Penny’s Big Breakaway studio Evening Star announces another half a dozen layoffs

Evening Star, the studio behind Penny’s Big Breakaway, has announced half a dozen layoffs.

CTO Hunter Bridges announced the redundancies on X/Twitter, saying, “this isn’t a choice we wanted to make”, but “due to volatile market conditions in the games industry and operational realities of our business, Evening Star is having to part ways with six team members”.

“This is a post that I was hoping not to have to write, but Evening Star has been swept up in the same turbulence that has affected so many of our peers in the games industry for the last year and a half,” added CEO Dave Padilla on LinkedIn.

“Despite our best efforts to secure another project to keep our team together, we are in the unfortunate situation of having to lay off some of the folks who have worked with us for the last few years on Penny’s Big Breakaway. If you have room on your project for some best in class developers who shipped a critically beloved console title, then look no further than these amazing game devs.”

“I cannot stress enough how amazing they all were to work with, how talented they are in their respective disciplines, and how lucky any team would be to have them on their project. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if there are any opportunities that you would like to share with these folks, or if you would like a reference for them.”

For those keeping track, with one quarter still to go, 2024 has seen almost 13,000 developers and publishers lose their jobs. Most recently, Microsoft laid off a further 650 Xbox staff on Thursday, although no games have been canceled or studios have been closed this time.

The layoffs follow the 1900 people who lost their jobs at the company in January this year. This means Microsoft has now laid off 2,550 staff members in the last year alone.