New Tomb Raider update does not sound good as more devs laid off

Crystal Dynamics has announced its third round of layoffs within a year, as a way to ‘optimise’ development on the next Tomb Raider.

We might have had several remasters and the announcement of a new TV show, but there’s still been no update on the next Tomb Raider game – with the last one being over seven years ago now.

A new Tomb Raider, in partnership with Amazon, was originally announced almost three years ago, but we still haven’t seen any visual evidence of the project. There’s been vague talk of it going in an open world direction, but no detailed descriptions of any kind.

Developer Crystal Dynamics has now given an update, of sorts, on the project, but it’s far from encouraging.

In a post on LinkedIn on Thursday, the developer announced it had laid off ‘just under 30 team members across various departments and projects’, in what’s described as a ‘difficult but necessary decision to reorganise Crystal Dynamics’ studios and teams’.

This is the third round of layoffs at the developer in under a year. The studio laid off 17 employees in March, and an additional undisclosed amount in August. At the time of the latter, Crystal Dynamics said the ‘future of Tomb Raider’ was ‘unaffected by this decision’.

In this latest round of layoffs, the studio cited Tomb Raider as one of the reasons behind the layoffs. ‘To our players – as the realities of the industry continue to evolve, we’ve made these painful choices as a way to optimise the continued development of our flagship Tomb Raider game, as well as shaping the rest of the studio to make new games for the future,’ the post reads.

‘We appreciate the continued support of our players, our colleagues, and our partners during this transition and look forward to sharing the team’s amazing new work with the world in the future.’

Considering we haven’t yet seen anything from the next Tomb Raider game, these latest layoffs suggest we’re still some time away from a reveal, let alone a launch.

Beyond Crystal Dynamics, which is owned by Embracer Group, these layoffs might also be a by-product of trouble at Amazon Games. The latter recently announced massive cuts to its gaming division, including a ‘halt’ on a ‘significant amount’ of its first party AAA game work.

In an internal memo (via Variety) at the time, Amazon Games boss Steve Boom said it is ‘continuing to work with our external studio partners Crystal Dynamics on an upcoming Tomb Raider’, but it’s possible some funding was pulled as part of these cutbacks.

Considering the Perfect Dark reboot, co-developed by Crystal Dynamics, was cancelled earlier this year, it only intensifies the pressure around the next Tomb Raider to succeed. All these layoffs, however, don’t exactly paint a reassuring picture for the final product.

Working under the constant danger of being laid off is not conducive to developers producing their best work, even though they’re the ones that will be blamed if it turns out to be a disappointment.

The last mainline Tomb Raider title was 2018’s Shadow Of The Tomb Raider, when Crystal Dynamics was owned by Square Enix (although the majority of the work on that one was done by Eidos-Montréal). That game served as a conclusion of a trilogy, which began with 2013’s Tomb Raider reboot.

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