LogInOver the past couple of months, we've been extensively covering the silent layoffs taking place at Starbreeze, the developer of the Payday franchise, reporting on the company quietly firing around 15% of its entire workforce behind closed doors and warning about their plans to terminate its French division – a division that, according to our sources within Starbreeze, plays a crucial role in the technical side of the production pipeline and is largely responsible for patches and DLCs in the company's games.
Starbreeze
Unfortunately, it seems that Starbreeze management has now officially started the terminations, with an anonymous Starbreeze employee – who proved to be part of the team by sharing a wealth of screenshots of the company's internal Slack channels – revealing to 80 Level that it was announced within the company last week that more than half of the French employees are being dismissed by the end of March, while the remaining ones are set to be let go by June.
As mentioned by the employee, the official reason provided by Starbreeze higher-ups appears to be that the layoffs are necessary for economic reasons, however, the exact nature of these reasons hasn't been disclosed to those affected.
One French developer, according to the screenshots provided to us by the anonymous worker, was particularly dissatisfied with the management's handling of the situation, sharing a lengthy statement on Crew – SBZ's Slack chat that seems to include the company's entire workforce with over 230 members – accusing the executives of breaking several French labor laws.
According to this message, the entire French team wasn't invited to an All-Hands meeting on March 13, an action that, in the view of the French developer, violates Articles L1222-1, L1132-1, and L1233-4 of France's Code du Travail. The developer noted that excluding employees who are still under contract and subject to dismissal procedures from a company-wide meeting discussing the company's future, strategy, organizational structure, and projects constitutes a direct violation of these obligations.
Here's an excerpt from the message in question:
"Since this meeting covers topics that directly impact ongoing projects and potential reclassification opportunities, excluding us confirms that no sincere reclassification effort is being made, in clear violation of Article L1233-4. I formally ask: What is the legal justification for this exclusion?"
In response, Starbreeze interim CEO Mats Juhl shared a statement similar to the one we've seen before, completely avoiding the matter and instead expressing concern about the topic being discussed openly in the Crew channel for everyone to see, rather than privately via phone, email, or Slack DMs. Below is Juhl's full statement:
"I'm available to clarify via phone or Slack/e-mail if there are any legal concerns regarding my decision on who to invite to an internal meeting. Our internal slack channel Crew is not the appropriate way to have this kind of discussion, this discussion ends here! Thanks."
To which, the French developer who wrote the original message responded as such:
"It is the perfect and most appropriate medium to do clarifications, considering that you owe us and the entire company an explanation. If you want to be fully transparent, I can't think of a better medium."
Being fully transparent, as we already know, is not Starbreeze's highest priority, and after this conversation, the Slack account of the French employee was simply deactivated, even though they hadn't been laid off yet, once again highlighting the major divide between Starbreeze's higher-ups and developers. We have contacted the French employee to learn more about the situation and will update the report if we receive a response.
As for the layoffs themselves, the previous screenshots seen by 80 Level revealed that SBZ's French branch employed 23 people by mid-February, so it's reasonable to assume that most, if not all, of those 23 are likely to be made redundant come July.
At this time, it's unclear who will be fired in June, who will be let go by the end of this month, and who, if anyone, would be willing to relocate to Sweden, which appears to be the entire point of the exercise – to consolidate in Starbreeze's home country while closing divisions abroad. 80 Level has invited Starbreeze executives for an interview to discuss the layoffs and the lack of transparency, so stay tuned for updates.
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