Bendy and the Ink Machine developer Kindly Beast has reportedly laid off around 50 members of staff.
Although the Ottawa-based studio hasn’t officially confirmed the cuts, a number of (now former) Kindly Beast employees have been sounding out job opportunities on social media, while also changing their job titles to reflect their departure and posting tweets that hint at a round of layoffs.
As spotted by one astute Reddit user, those affected by the apparent layoffs include VP of technology Mike Baker, art director Brendon Bauman, programmer Logan Stewart, 3D artist Graeme Fotheringham, and sound designer Connor Grail.
Lending more credence to the reports are some recent Glassdoor reviews (posted on October 12) that lambast studio management and CEO Mike Mood for a lack of direction, “nebulous” company policies, and in the case of Mood specifically, openly abusive behavior.
“Direction to staff on work and even the games being worked on was minimal at best, invisible at worst,” reads one review. “Employees were actively encouraged to seek lower quality ways of finishing their work, and attempts to innovate were seen as a problem.
“Industry best practices were discouraged, and attempts to use tools to organize workflow as per standards were discarded. Work was also discarded at the discretion of the Board and sometimes openly insulted by the CEO.”
The company has also completely purged the “Our Team’ section from its website, and other members of the Ottawa game development scene have also been alluding to a spate of job cuts – with some directly mentioning Kindly Beast.
“As a group that generally represents the Ottawa game dev scene, everything in this city is ace except what’s been going down at Kindly Beast,” tweeted Ottawa game collective, Dirty Rectangles.
We’ve reached out to Kindly Beasts in an attempt to confirm the news.