Hi-Rez, who some of us on staff haven't exactly forgiven for slowly dropping Tribes: Ascend way back when, has more or less proven that time is a flat circle by doing almost the exact same thing with its current games, Smite and Paladins.
That's as per both a message posted to Hi-Rez's eSports Discord, shared here by Smite pro Hayzer, and comments provided to Kotaku from the studio's president Stewart Chisam. The message, from an admin named Hinduman, reads: "Smite 1, Paladins and Rogue Company servers will remain available for the foreseeable future, but no further major updates are currently planned for these games.
"We understand this may come as a disappointment to many of you, but know that Paladins has an incredibly special place in our hearts. We plan to keep the servers and currently available content running as long as possible to allow you to continue to enjoy the game."
Just for the sake of confirmation, I checked the official Paladins Discord server, too. Moderator PWNDotcom writes: "Active development of Paladins is being halted. No more major updates are expected, however the servers will remain online."
Chisam would later confirm to Kotaku that around 70 people are being laid off. Over on the r/Smite subreddit, a list of impacted staff is being collected. This includes balance designers like Lexie "LermyWermy" Lerman, as well as eSports staff such as broadcast producer Billy Basikally. This isn't exactly the first time of trouble at Hi Rez, which appears to be shuffling all of its eggs into one basket.
In October last year, the studio laid off employees to ensure "long term success", while also announcing the closure of two games. Paladins, in particular, wasn't seeing many major updates, with the most recent champion, Omen, releasing in 2023. That's not to say there haven't been patches, mind—from what I can tell, the game's devs have mostly been focused on bug fixes and quality of life improvements. Which is a little sad in the rear view, improving a game for a future it won't really see.
Chisam continues to write: "We know this is an exceptionally difficult time to find work in the industry, which makes it even more devastating to have let go of so many loyal and talented developers. We pursued every angle available to us to avoid these cuts, but it was necessary to ensure that we survive in this tumultuous environment."
Instead, Smite 2 is going to be the "primary focus of the newly streamlined operations" and—man, there's that word again, 'streamlined'. I don't want to come across as a cynic, but I'm starting to develop an inverse pavlovian response to the words streamlined, lean, and agile as a result—it especially rings a bit hollow considering Chisam's statements last year, where he stated that the layoffs then "reflects a failure in my leadership, and one for which I take personal accountability." In this case accountability apparently means, uh, doing the same thing a few months later.
It just appears to be a bad habit of the games industry. It's one thing for Hi-Rez to slow down support on older games—as much fun as Paladins was, it is coming up on its 10th year—it's another to, as Michael Douse put it last week while firing shots at EA, fail to retain "institutional knowledge". I'm not privy to Hi-Rez's financials, but it really does all seem backwards. We're in a cursed time loop where devs are rewarded for their hard work on one project by being shown the door because the next can't support them.
