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Chinese Room’s Future Uncertain After Staff Layoffs

Acclaimed developer The Chinese Room have laid off staff members to cut costs. The founder Dan Hinchbeck is looking to take the company on a new direction.

September 25, 2017

Developer The Chinese Room has laid off staff, leaving only three people and the future of the developer in doubt.

The developer, known for hits such as Dear Esther, Amnesia: A Machine For Pig and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, spoke to Eurogamer about the decision, with the founder Dan Pinchbeck saying;

“Its really expensive running a studio. We were 11 or 12 people at that point. You’re chewing through £35 – 40,000 a month, which is pretty hefty. Your running costs are very high…”

Only three people remain of the once 12 strong team, Pinchbeck, his wife Jessica Curry who is also company director and lead designer Andrew Cranshaw.

Pinchbeck spoke more into the reasons for the layoffs, with him now “getting bored” of ‘walking simulators’, a genre that defines the developers, and getting funding for more ambitious projects was proving to be difficult;

“We’re done with doing walking sims and story stuff. We wanted to do something more complex, more involved and bigger scale. And that takes a long time to negotiate, which makes it difficult if you are coming to the end of a project, you’re burning £35-40,000 a month, and you know you’re probably looking at another five or six months worth of negotiations going ahead, where you’ve got no income coming in.”

Staff were informed of the closure a few months before the developers latest project So Let Us Melt was released in order for staff to find new jobs, which Pinchbeck helped with.

The Chinese Room was a polarising developer who nonetheless have made several games which have become cult classics in their own right. While it has not been officially closed, it could take some time before a new title is released by them. Pinchbeck hints that he would like to go the direction of first-person shooters during his interview with Eurogamer, but for now, the future looks bleak for the once king of the walking simulators.

You can read the full interview with Dan Pinchbeck here

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