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Smilegate Barcelona, the studio established in 2020 to develop an open-world AAA console title, has reportedly been closed and all employees let go

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Thick Thighs Save Lives

NeoGAF's Physical Games Advocate Extraordinaire
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That’s according to director Stephane Blais – formerly of Eidos Montreal and Ubisoft – who claimed on his LinkedIn page that all employees are set to be let go from the European arm of the Korean Crossfire company.

“As our industry is starting to look more and more like a game of Battleship, it is our turn to be hit,” he wrote. “Smilegate Barcelona is closing down. All employees are being laid off.

“The last 6 months have been pretty intense – but allowed me to discover a fantastic and really dedicated team. All of them work so hard to try to save it. I am now #OpenToWork”.
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Blais was previously a narrative design director on Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, and narrative director for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Far Cry 5.

Edouard Albert, a project manager at Smilegate Barcelona, also posted suggesting the studio had closed.

“Well our journey at Smilegate Barcelona has come to an end,” they wrote. “Really appreciated my time there, working with amazing people and being able to improve on my own skill set. Now is time to look for my next adventure.”

VGC has asked Smilegate for comment on this story and will update it when we receive a response.
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www.videogameschronicle.com

Smilegate Barcelona reportedly closed and all employees let go | VGC

The studio was established in 2020 to work on an open-world game…
www.videogameschronicle.com www.videogameschronicle.com
 
StreetsofBeige

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Banjo64 said:
What could possibly go wrong with opening a brand new studio and immediately scaling up in terms of personnel and cost to make an AAA game?
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Other industries: Start small. If successful, ramp up bigger. And if more successful ramp up even bigger.

Video game company: Get as much upfront money as possible and go big right away.

That’s video game studios for ya.
 
C

crackajack

Member
Is this also one of those new studios where the money was supposed to be attracted by past accolades since they had veteran Jo Schmo from X and veteran Hans Gruber from Y? Maybe those teams are more often successfull than I notice, but it feels like a new studio build from veterans often means high chance of imploding and at least AAA costs even if nothing comes out of it?
 
DonF

DonF

Member
StereoVsn said:
I mean compared to what? Suburbs in Barcelona are going to be cheaper vs large US cities, London, Paris, etc…
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its not london expensive, but its one of the most expensive cities in spain. If you wanna start a studio in europe, there are other known cheaper places.
 
yurinka

yurinka

Member
DonF said:
barcelona is super expensive, big yikes
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Well, not compared to other big western game hubs like Canada, California, London, Paris, Sweden, Finland or Berlin.

K' Dash said:
How much is it?
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It depends of a lot of things. Having a few years of experience, not being even senior in a big mobile studio or AAA studio in Barcelona you can earn easily over $30-50K (and more in higher positions) per year including full health insurance (public + private covering everything) plus many benefits such as gym, restaurant tickets and so on.

This is way higher salary than the average one in Spain outside big gaming companies, in general. In Spain the minimum salary is around $16K, and the average around $27K.

To rent a flat may vary between somewhere $600-1400/month if you live in a nearby city (with great public transport, under 1h away from the office) or if you live in the city center. Some people share house and get a room instead for cheaper costs.

To have full lunch (2 dishes of good food, desert, drink including beer or wine and bread or coffe) in a bar/restaurant is around $10-20. To buy great fresh local food to cook at home is way cheaper. Things like university and the doctor are basically free.

The quality of life in general is great, with tons of free or very cheap options for sports, culture, art and great nearby nature like beach, forests, or even mountains to hike you can go by walking. You can go to ski to high mountains at a couple hours by car at a cheap price. Many options -some of them very cheap- to go out for party rocking in clubs, concerts or festivals.

One of the most expensive cities in Spain, but pretty cheap compared to the rest of European countries or North America.

POKEYCLYDE said:
Remember when the average development time for a triple A title was like 3 years? How do you open a studio in 2020 and have nothing worthy of saving after 4 years? A game should be just about finished after 4 years...
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The article is wrong, they did open in 2019, not in 2020. But nowadays AAA games take on average 5-9 years.

But yes, something in this studio was wrong. I know two of the ones who started it but quickly left. One to found the studio who developed and released Lords of the Fallen, and other to create a new Netease AAA studio in Barcelona with a Remedy design director. And also a few people more who worked there but left later to join other nearby studios a while ago. Some of them weren't happy.
 
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yurinka

yurinka

Member
BosmerCulter said:
There is very few spanish studios, this is sad *cries in iberian*
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Nah, there are like 500 dev studios and growing (most of them indie), around a quarter of them of them in the Barcelona area, which is specially big in the mobile area with King, Scopely (you may heard recently about Monopoly Go), Gameloft, Ubisoft, Zeptolab, IGG, Bandai Namco, Social Point (bought by Take 2) or Digital Legends (bought by Activision, made CoD Warzone mobile) and many others.

In AAA/AA there's here Ubisoft, IO Interactive, Infinity Ward, THQ Nordic, Netease, Paradox, plus many people working remotely for EA or Riot.

Plus many other I may forget, and a ton of indies.

Edit: 2022 data about Spanish gaming industry (Facturación = revuenue, empresas = companies, empeados = employees, Alemania = Germany, Suecia = Sweden, Paises Bajos = Netherlands, Fact. por empresa = avg. revenue per company)
image.png

Half of the studios are either in Madrid (center) or Barcelona (north east) regions:
image.png


Only 5% of the Spanish gamedev studios have over 50 employees, 34% over 10 employees.
image.png

Half of the Spanish gamedev employement is in the Barcelona region:
image.png
 
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PSlayer

PSlayer

Member
Looking at Linkedin, it seems the company had around 44 employees following the page. The description says 51-200 employees.
 
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StereoVsn

StereoVsn

Gold Member
yurinka said:
Well, not compared to other big western game hubs like Canada, California, London, Paris, Sweden, Finland or Berlin.


It depends of a lot of things. Having a few years of experience, not being even senior in a big mobile studio or AAA studio in Barcelona you can earn easily over $30-50K (and more in higher positions) per year including full health insurance (public + private covering everything) plus many benefits such as gym, restaurant tickets and so on.

This is way higher salary than the average one in Spain outside big gaming companies, in general. In Spain the minimum salary is around $16K, and the average around $27K.

To rent a flat may vary between somewhere $600-1400/month if you live in a nearby city (with great public transport, under 1h away from the office) or if you live in the city center. Some people share house and get a room instead for cheaper costs.

To have full lunch (2 dishes of good food, desert, drink including beer or wine and bread or coffe) in a bar/restaurant is around $10-20. To buy great fresh local food to cook at home is way cheaper. Things like university and the doctor are basically free.

The quality of life in general is great, with tons of free or very cheap options for sports, culture, art and great nearby nature like beach, forests, or even mountains to hike you can go by walking. You can go to ski to high mountains at a couple hours by car at a cheap price. Many options -some of them very cheap- to go out for party rocking in clubs, concerts or festivals.

One of the most expensive cities in Spain, but pretty cheap compared to the rest of European countries or North America.


The article is wrong, they did open in 2019, not in 2020. But nowadays AAA games take on average 5-9 years.

But yes, something in this studio was wrong. I know two of the ones who started it but quickly left. One to found the studio who developed and released Lords of the Fallen, and other to create a new Netease AAA studio in Barcelona with a Remedy design director. And also a few people more who worked there but left later to join other nearby studios a while ago. Some of them weren't happy.
Click to expand...
This is a great post and it much more eloquently described what I was trying to get across.

Basically Barcelona may be expensive overall for Spain (save for Madrid) and some Eastern European countries, but it’s still cheaper vs most of the rest of Western European and North American major cities.

So it’s not a bad location to put in a studio. Issues were unlikely to be related with cost of living in Barcelona.
 
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