According to Korean gaming website ThisIsGame’s interaction with NCsoft, the company officially announced its retrenchment plans a few days ago to its staff as part of a major restructuring (or reorganization) effort. Although the number is not confirmed, it is said that between 200 to 300 staff will be let go. NCsoft currently has a total of 2670 permanent staff and 140 temporary staff.
The main cause of this exercise is due to efforts to streamline operations in the company and direct more focus on the development teams. With that said, most of the retrenched staff are from the business department, music service 24hz, casual games department, a now-closed educational game project, and web and mobile games department. Current in-development core games are said to be unaffected.
NCsoft’s operating profits in Q1 2012 fell 64% compared to the previous year, with the main reason being the astronomical and ever-rising manpower costs despite rising revenue from its games. This is also a new low profit in the past 40 months for the company. Lineage III’s development is said to be on course as of now.
