Just Cause developer Avalanche closes two offices

Resulting in around 50 employees being laid off

Marco Wutz | Jun 4, 2024

Avalanche Studios Group / Square Enix

Avalanche Studios Group, the developer behind the Just Cause series, confirmed that it closed two of its five offices with the locations in New York and Montreal being shut down. This move is resulting in “around 50” employees being laid off, which is about 9% of the company’s workforce.

The two closed branches comprised Avalanche’s entire presence in North America. Its offices in Europe, which are located in Stockholm, Malmö, and Liverpool, appear to be unaffected by these developments.

“This is an exceptionally difficult decision, but we believe it’s necessary to ensure a stable and sustainable future for the company,” the statement given out by Avalanche reads. “Our focus is now on supporting all Avalanchers through this challenging time. We’re grateful for the invaluable contributions of those leaving and remain committed to creating incredible experiences for our players.”

The Montreal office was opened only fairly recently, being a result of Avalanche acquiring former Ubisoft studio Monster Closet in October 2023, while the New York division was established in June 2011 as the company’s first office outside of Sweden.

Avalanche’s latest game is Rage 2, which it released in 2019 with Bethesda as publisher, though Expansive Worlds and Systemic Reaction – the two other studios belonging to the group – have published some games between then and now.

The main studio is currently working on an open-world co-op game called Contraband for Xbox Game Studios, which is planned to be released for PC and Xbox Series X|S. Not much else is known about the game announced in June 2021.

Published Jun 4, 2024

MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg