Although farming simulation games are a popular category on Steam, not every game can be easily successful. The farming game “Palia” developed by the “Singularity 6” game team formed by former Riot Games developers Aidan Karabaich and Anthony Leung has reported regrettable news of significant layoffs in the past few days.
“Palia” is an open-world farm simulation game. Players play as humans who travel to the fantasy world of Palia. With the help of local long-eared residents, they go to Xingilima Village to settle down and start their own pastoral life.
However, Polgon reporter Nicole Carpenter first revealed that Singularity 6 Studio was laying off employees on April 5. According to former employee Daphne Fiato, 49 employees reportedly lost their jobs, about 1/3 of the studio’s entire workforce.
Just under 50 people were laid off yesterday from Palia developer Singularity 6, according to two sources. Thinking of those impacted 💔
— Nicole Carpenter (@sweetpotatoes) April 5, 2024
49 people Thanos snapped 💀
— Daphne Fiato ✨Looking For Work✨ (@invaderroxas) April 5, 2024
“Palia” will be launched exclusively for free on the Epic Games platform as early as October 2023 (This game is region locked in EGS Taiwan), then launched on Switch at the end of the same year, and on Steam at the end of March.
Although this game is free to operate, has a diverse life system and a comfortable pastoral atmosphere to attract players, due to its free-to-play mall design, there is a waiting time mechanism for building material conversion, and many bugs have been mentioned by the player community in the comment area. Error issues and other criticisms, the overall evaluation on Steam is still mixed.
The layoffs of “Palia” are another wave of industry news that has attracted global attention following SEGA’s sale of “Storm Company” and the layoffs of Relic Entertainment. In fact, there have been constant news about the reorganization of overseas game studios since last year. Foreign media PC Gamer According to statistics, tens of thousands of employees have been affected during this period.
