Developer of Tales of Kenzera: Zau, Surgent Studios, announced on X/Twitter on Tuesday that it had experienced a round of layoffs.
The complete statement is available below. It makes it clear that fewer than twelve workers were impacted, and it acknowledges that Surgent is regrettably only one of many studios that are experiencing layoffs this year.
The statement reads, “We remain very pleased with our entire team’s efforts on ZAU and of the accolades it has received from critics and players alike, even if it is a challenging period in the games industry.” “At this time, our priorities are helping people who are impacted, carrying on our work on ZAU, and planning for the future with our next creative projects.”
Shortly after it was released, Abubakar Salim, the director of Tales of Kenzera and founder of Surgent Studios, also reposted the statement on his X/Twitter account, stating, “This hurts terribly.” I did not want to share this news with you today.”
I sincerely appreciate everyone who has checked in. This is painful. I did not want to share this news with you today.
I am incredibly proud of the accomplishments the team has made these past four years. It was encouraging to see how resilient each of them was when things got hard.
“I am proud of the accomplishments the team has made in the last four years. Salim continued, “Everyone of them stood so strong when things got rough, it was amazing.” It therefore stinks to be breaking this news today. Even while we are not alone in this, it does not make things any easier.
In addition, he sent links to the impacted workers so they may look for other jobs.
Game Developer had noticed, before Surgent’s announcement, that several of the studio’s staff members had posted job-seeking statements on social networking sites like LinkedIn. The announcement follows the publication of Surgent’s debut novel, Tales of Kenzera, in barely three months.
Tales of Kenzera received favorable reviews upon its April 23 release on the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X | S, and PC, according to a statement from Surgent. The Metroidvania “is hardly groundbreaking within the genre, but is boosted by a very affecting tale about how to live on in this world when your loved ones have passed on to the next,” according to our review, which gave it a 7 out of 10.
