Perpetual Entertainment's response to reports of employee lay-offs

 

There have been reports that Perpetual Entertainment allegedly laid off 35 of its employees, citing budget issues related to the delay of its MMORPG Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising, or so says an anonymous employee. Gamasutra reports that the delay of the MMO release was believed to be an estimated six to ten months.
The layoffs are supposedly a cost-saving measure to accommodate the increase in the development time. The terminations also included several members of the development team of Star Trek Online.
Contrary to earlier reports, an official statement on behalf of Perpetual president and co-founder Chris McKibbin was posted on the God & Heroes community forums. It says that the delay of the game is related to feedback from beta testers, and that the Gods and Heroes development team remains over 80 people strong. The statement reads:

As some of you may have heard we have made some staffing changes at Perpetual. We are proud to announce that we are within a month of being content complete on Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising, our upcoming AAA MMO title. As we achieve this major development milestone, a number of content production roles come to an end. The Gods & Heroes team remains over 80 talented people strong as we enter the final phase prior to launch -- play-testing and tuning to deliver the highest quality game possible.
In addition, because we value the feedback our beta testers have been giving us, and because we want to ship the highest quality game possible, we have moved our target ship date from the spring to the summer of 2007. This extension of the testing and tuning phase of the project will allow us to focus entirely on making a great game which is our #1 goal.
Perpetual remains 100 committed to shipping a fantastic Gods & Heroes game and to continuing development of the much-anticipated Star Trek Online.

Community response regarding the delay seems positive. Apparently people just want the game polished really well. For more info on the Official Statement and player response feel free to use our read-link below

Source: Perpetual Entertainment's response to reports of employee lay-offs
Originally published on Fri, 15 Dec 2006 13:43:39 GMT by Ian C.