THQ has let go 20 employees from its marketing and production departments. According to a statement provided to IGN by a THQ spokesperson, “THQ confirms a realignment has taken place in the company’s marketing and production groups in Agoura Hills. This change is reflective of the company’s ongoing strategy to create a more focused, agile, and digitally-oriented organization. Less than 3% of the company’s global workforce was impacted, and no development teams or projects were affected by this action.”
The news first surfaced in a leaked email posted on Twitter by 3D Realms founder George Broussard. In the email, THQ president Jason Rubin writes the following:
"All,
Days like today are not easy for any of us. The worst part of restructuring is clearly the restructuring. But this is a necessary part of improving and rebuilding. It is never easy to see friends and colleagues leave the company. Nobody in management, including me, takes these decisions lightly, but we must all continue to remain focused on driving the business forward and look towards our future.
As you know, it is my vision for THQ to enter into new markets though new distribution methodologies, and reaching those consumers in those markets will take a different approach to marketing. It is also vitally important that we improve our production methodologies and oversight so that we are shipping better titles, on budget and on time.
In our quest to make these changes, I have been looking at the Marketing and Production structure at HQ along with the heads of those departments, Rich Williams and Ron Moravek. We have identified changes that need to be made and thus today we reduced the size of these departments by about 20 individuals.
It is worth pointing out that none of the development teams are effected, and we do not anticipate the reduction to have any impact whatsoever on the titles in production or the future scale of our output. It is also quite likely that in the long run the company will hire new individuals with different skill sets in their stead. To put this in perspective, Volition alone anticipates growing by about 20 individuals in the next 12 months. This represents a shift of resources from oversight to production, and from centralization out to the teams. I would also like to note that these two departments were largely unaffected by the January reduction, so it makes some sense that their size and capabilities do not align with the changes made elsewhere.
I am genuinely excited about both the quality of work and the innovation happening at the company right now. When I look forward to the type of games and digital experiences we will deliver over the next few years, I see a new THQ taking a new market position in a very different industry environment.
Let’s all try to keep our eyes focused on that bright future."
This isn’t the first shake-up at THQ in recent months, following the closure of its Arizona quality assurance facility in July. A full timeline of THQ’s 2012 is available here.
THQ released Darksiders II earlier this week, which IGN gave a 7.5. The company also unveiled the roster for WWE 13, which is set to hit stores in October.
IGN wishes the best of luck to anyone affected by today’s news.
Andrew Goldfarb is IGN’s associate news editor. Keep up with pictures of the latest food he’s been eating by following him on Twitter or IGN.
Source : ign[dot]com
