Starting Wednesday, posts began to circulate on LinkedIn from former Visual Concepts developers who were all saying the same thing: they’d been laid off. One software developer, Brittany Thibodeaux, said, “Like many of my very talented colleagues, I was affected by the layoffs at Visual Concepts today”. Others expressed gratitude for being able to have worked on the team, such as Anna Hodges, who wrote, “After three years and some change, my time at VC is at a close. I’m so grateful to all of the extremely talented, and dedicated people I’ve had the opportunity to work with. Best wishes to everyone affected by the layoffs”. But not everyone had the same reaction, with one former VC developer, Nina Marotta, writing, “I don’t really have the words right now. Last week, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder that will shorten my lifespan. Today, while on a sick day because of said autoimmune disorder, I was laid off. This is the second time in my short career that I’ve gone through this, and I am genuinely in agony both physically and mentally. Today, instead of resting my body, I am up shaking and sobbing and trying to wrap my head about what just happened”.

Even prior to the VC layoffs, 2K had cut staff working on the free-to-play shooter Project Ethos earlier this month, which was relayed via an internal memo by studio head Ben Brinkman, which wrote, “Since joining 31st Union, it’s become clear that changes need to be made to our team in order to realize our goals and deliver this experience for players. Our success is dependent on our ability to work more quickly and nimbly. To do that, we’ve made the difficult decision to scale back our team to better align with where we are in development, which unfortunately means parting ways with some valued colleagues today”.

The layoffs for VC come after massive success with their games WWE 2K16 and NBA 2K16. Alongside this, 2K Games saw a $2 billion boost in value following GTA 6 rumors. It appears that WWE 2K16’s team was hit the hardest due to WWE 2K16: Netflix Edition not meeting expectations as Netflix had put it, despite good reviews and plenty of downloads, causing Netflix not to renew its deal with 2K Games.