Bigpoint No Longer So Big. Shuts Down US Office, Lays Off 120 Workers

Well not every Free to Play company can be successful. This was made abundantly clear this week when Bigpoint the developer/publisher of a variety of well known Free to Play titles announced that they would be cutting 120 jobs and completely closing down their US Operations. Ouch...

As reported by GamesIndustry, Bigpoint will be cutting a total of 120 jobs, more than 40 of which are located in their San Francisco office which will be completely shut down. The current CEO, Heiko Hubertz, also announced that he will be departing from the CEO role and Bigpoint. When asked about the closure of the US office, Hubertz had this to say:

"We have seen that developing games in the US is not really the most efficient way for us at the moment," Hubertz told GamesIndustry International.

"The games that we have developed in the last two years haven't been that successful, and the San Francisco area and Bay Area is quite a competitive market. San Francisco is, after New York, one of the most expensive cities you can live in in the US, so the people are quite expensive."

Bigpoint had only recently opened the San Francisco office in 2010 with Hubertz personally overseeing operations. The studio was created to produce as well as act as business development, marketing and PR for the company.

The company's employees were notified yesterday of the decision.