Solana recreation developer Automata pronounces mass layoffs

by Jeremy

Solana recreation developer Automata (ATMTA) will bear “a big headcount discount” to protect its capacity to develop Star Atlas. After the restructuring, the Automata workforce will comprise simply 45 employees, in comparison with 235 in late 2022.

In keeping with the July 24 announcement on Discord, Michael Wagner, CEO and co-founder of ATMTA, mentioned the restructured workforce will as an alternative shift its focus to “delivering SAGE and the newly introduced Crew Cell App.” In the meantime, the event of a software program improvement package (SDK) combining Unreal Engine 5 and Solana will “resume at a considerably slower tempo.” The SDK serves as the idea for the Star Atlas recreation.

In explaining the modifications, Wagner wrote that roughly 33% of the undertaking’s income was taken as in-game token Atlas, which the workforce “steadfastly held.” The token has misplaced roughly 80% of its worth up to now yr. As well as:

“We additionally needed to pay a cloth tax legal responsibility approaching $30 million. And as lots of you already know, we misplaced roughly $15 million from our treasury with the collapse of FTX, which represented a good portion of our liquid money stability.”

Builders mentioned that the workforce managed to get well a “sizable portion” of the FTX funds in January, however runway stays “significantly diminished.” Wagner additionally acknowledged that it was “unlikely” for the undertaking to shut an fairness and debt financing deal signed in January.

“It’s a laborious reality that our present excessive fee of AAA-quality improvement is capital intensive and, at current, unsustainable with out a vital shift in enterprise technique.”

On the similar time, the Solana blockchain recorded all-time excessive utilization within the first half of 2023. The community had a 100% uptime in Q2. The Solana Basis launched grants to help the ecosystem earlier this yr. 

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