Over 6 years ago, Firemint and IronMonkey, both EA studios, merged to form Firemonkeys in Australia. Firemint at the time was responsible for the fantastic Real Racing and IronMonkey were known for Mass Effect Infiltrator ($4.99) and Dead Space ($4.99). There’s bad news for the studio today as reported by Kotaku with big layoffs. Firemonkeys focussed exclusively on mobile game development and is one of the largest developers in Australia.
Firemonkeys are probably most well known today for Real Racing 3 and Need for Speed: No Limitss. The layoffs that occured are reported to see 40 to 50 people impacted of the 200 strong company. Kotaku also reports after talking to an employee who remained anonymous that the current atmosphere in the studio is not looking good with remaining staff working under the assumption that the full studio will be shut down. An EA representative told Kotaku the studio would continiue to operate and continue to work on some of EA’s most popular mobile games. Firemonkeys were developing Real Racing 4 and that was reportedly cancelled earlier this week the Kotaku report goes on to say. This news really sucks. Hopefully those impacted by these layoffs can find something soon. Best of luck to everyone at the studio.
[Source: Kotaku]
