Social studio steps away from internal game development
6Waves Lolapps, the social games company currently embroiled in a game cloning lawsuit, has shed its development workforce to reorganise the business.
The company, which last year raised $35 million through Nexon and Insight Venture Partners, will now build far less, if any, internally developed games.
The extent of the layoff operation is unknown.
“6waves Lolapps will now focus on working with independent developers to launch and grow their mobile and social games,” chief executive Rex Ng said in a statement sent to TechCrunch.
“As a result, we have restructured the company to focus on key functions which include developer outreach, product advisory, user growth initiatives and our publishing platform.”
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In January it emerged that mobile studio Spry Fox had launched a lawsuit against 6Waves Lolapps, alleging that its recent release Yeti Town is a "blatant copy of Triple Town."
“Sometimes you need to stand up for yourself, or you’re just begging to be taken advantage of,” said Spry Fox CEO David Edery.
6Waves Lolapps contests the allegations.
The internal development team at 6L is not responsible for any of the cloned games 6L has gotten their outsourcing companies to work on. (e.g Yeti Town) The internal team works on the Raven series work, which now will be handed off to the studios they acquired elsewhere.
Meanwhile, 6L did not give advance notice to majority of their development team of this massive lay off. The notice came in fast, and within an hour on a Monday morning, they were shown the door to get out of the office immediately. They try to shut their worker's mouth up too about the entire thing and threatened them with lawsuits or no pay.
Sad fact is the management were the one that screwed up, but the lower tier team gets the ultimate beating. Can you imagine having to find a job bearing the name of a horrible company in your resume now? It ain't going to be easy.
Just bear in mind, that if the 6L management can rip off another company's game while under NDA, and lay off their workers in some of the most unnecessary, and inhuman manner, they can also do that to you anytime. Don't do business with them. Be warned. 6L has proven itself to be an extreme case of an untrustworthy business dealer.
-An infuriated friend of one of the casualty in 6L development team.
