It’s another sad day in the video game industry. LightBox Interactive, the studio behind the PS3 exclusive Starhawk, led by the talented Dylan Jobe (Warhawk) has announced that the studio will be going through a drastic downsizing. 24 team members of the Texas based studio will be losing their job as of this Friday. One silver ling is that,

 “all 24 of them are getting a severance package.” 

Jobe went on to say that the studio will not be shutting down like some reports have indicated and that they will instead be focusing on iOS (iPhone, iPad) games. Despite building off of the popular Warhawk, Sony was never able to get much traction with Starhawk, having sold only 170,000 copies to date. Dylan commented,

 “Lay-offs always suck but they are an unfortunate reality of business sometimes. The best we can do is try and treat our people with respect during the shocking transition of a lay-off,” 

While many readers might point to their likes/dislike of particular games in the comment section, there are the few who take things to the extreme and in fact wish for the studios closing, due to their dismay for that title. While I can sympethise with the passion behind those comments (sorry, you can’t convince me to pick up a CoD game), it needs to be pointed out how short sighted such views are and that there are real ramifications beyond your inner satisfaction that a particular may no longer continue, though one needs to simply just ignore the title as no one is actually forcing you to play them. Instead, we need to remember that those 24 staff members in this case are husband and fathers, mothers and mortgage owners who no longer have a source of income. Its with that view that no matter how much we may dismay a particular product, we must never forget about those who are behind them and the real lifes that are forever altered when a product fails or a studio comes close to shutting their doors.

With that, I wish the surviving team at LightBox Interactive all the luck in the world on their future endeavors and hope that the 24 laid off members are able to find new opportunities in the near future. Friend of the site and creator of God of War and Twisted Metal David Jaffe had this to say to the soon-to-be laid off employees,

 Sad to hear about the layoffs as well. On the possible positive side, I’m looking for a CTO & lead network engineer for down here in sunny San Diego! 🙂 

He can be contacted via Twitter.