Turbine has suffered a round of layoffs, though parent company Warner Bros. Entertainment Group will not comment on how many employees were affected. The studio behind free-to-play MMOs including Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons & Dragons Online terminated the positions to conform with corporate restructuring, The Boston Globe reports.
“As part of the continual review of our business operations and fluctuating market conditions, we have had to make reductions in our Turbine workforce,” reads a statement issued by Warner Bros. “The group continues to remain an integral part of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.”
Riders of Rohan, Turbine's latest expansion for the 5-year-old LotRO, went online just last week.
It's been a bad week for online gaming companies, with Battlestar Galactica Online developer Bigpoint laying off 80 in its Hamburg offices and 40 in San Francisco. Bigpoint told GamesIndustry International that developing games in the Bay Area was simply too expensive for the Germany-based company to remain competitive. Social gaming giant Zynga also laid off 5 percent of its full-time workforce.
They say bad news comes in threes, so maybe we're in for a break?
