In a gaming market currently dominated by battle royale options and first-person shooters, it’s a refreshing sight to see when a multiplayer space battleship game enters. Welcome, Dreadnought by Six Foot and YAGER. Despite the niche it has carved itself as an entertaining and fun game, there’s fairly mixed reviews on Steam that indicate some problems that need attention. In order to do so, however, some employees had to face some bad news.

Six Foot faced a major wave of layoffs following the launch of the game, leaving a third of the developers working on Dreadnought unemployed. According to Game Informer, a series of events eventually led to this, a matter that started veering its head earlier this year as Six Foot told its staff of financial issues involving the game’s development.

As a matter of fact, Six Foot CEO Matt Ballesteros offered employees a way out early as the team will face a major lay-off pointed toward October, the release month of Dreadnought. It boiled down to how much the spaceship shooter cost the studio to develop and how much it would cost to maintain it after launch. A source told Game Informer:

It cost about $400,000 for the last blitz/crunch/push to get Dreadnought launched on Steam. Paying everyone in general costs about $80,000 a day. The game has not made anywhere near that; I do not recall the exact number, but it was less than $20,000 a day.”

Six Foot COO Christian Svensson confirmed the report with the following statement:

In August, Six Foot informed its staff of the upcoming potential for major changes to our company structure, including continued development of Dreadnought as a live product. Everyone on the games team was given the option to stay on and continue working or begin searching for other opportunities with the full support of the company and the aid of our staffing team, while still receiving pay in the interim. New updates on the company’s status were delivered to the full team every two weeks from there.

Today we regrettably confirm a reduction of about a third of our game dev workforce. We’re continuing to make available the full resources of our company to try to help those affected and their families land on their feet as quickly as possible.

We remain committed to Dreadnought’s ongoing development, growth, and the pursuit of new projects. We are also dedicated to remaining active in helping our affected family to transition as smoothly as possible.”

Dismissing hard-working folks isn’t an easy task for most, but we wish the best of luck for all those involved and the next adventures that lie in wait for those back on the job-searching market. What do you think of Six Foot’s dismissal of a third of their staff? Do you think their development process could have been better planned to prevent this, or was it inevitable? Let us know what you think in the comments section below or start a conversation on DFTG Facebook page. To stay up to date on gaming news as it happens, follow us on Twitter! Here’s some of our latest and related articles:

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Dreadnought is available to play now on PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4.