"Avalanche Studios sliding 77 employees pink slips"
What?! Swedish dev house Avalanche, as you may remember, is the maker of Just Cause, the absurdly over-the-top game of open-world regime change set in a Caribbean dictatorship. There's a lot of affection for Just Cause around the office here, because the Latin lover-style secret agent protagonist, Rico Rodriguez, is so hammy. Oh, and because it lets you do things like leap from a speeding motorcycle, grapple onto and jack a helicopter, then fly that chopper straight into a mountainside military base just after parachuting lazily to safety. The game is stupid in the best possible way and I love it.
Avalanche has been working on a Just Cause sequel for Eidos, the fate of which I was immediately concerned about.
Nothing to worry about there--Just Cause 2 is still in production, as is another project I've never heard of called The Hunter. It turns out the job cuts resulted from Avalanche's loss of publishing deals for two other unannounced projects. On the upside, the studio says Just Cause 2 will get a "stronger focus" in the wake of the condensed staff. On the downside, 77 developers are out of work.
I wanted to make some kind of joke involving Tyrkish Peber here, but really there's nothing funny about people losing their jobs, so I'll just say: Tyrkish Peber! Avoid it!