Web3 Game Developer Star Atlas Lays Off Over 60% of Workforce

Popular Web3 game developer Star Atlas has downsized its workforce by over 60% as part of a major restructuring. With the latest redundancy, the platform has cut its headcount from 167 employees to 45. The layoff also marked a significant decline from the platform’s peak of 235 staff in late 2022.

A Strategic Move

“While the team size is much smaller, we will be more agile and fully capable of delivering on our prioritized products and maintaining all other existing products. We also believe that with a smaller footprint, more focused approach, and greatly reduced burn rate, we will be able to more readily attract capital investments that may enable us to ramp up production on more product lines,” Star Atlas said in a statement.

Star Atlas outlined new changes to expect at the firm due to the recent job cut. The platform noted that the remaining team will focus on delivering the SAGE browser game and the recently announced Crew Mobile application. It added that the CORE graphic novel will continue to be released, with the DAC platform getting ready to launch soon.

The platform also noted that the development of the Unreal Engine 5 game and the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) governance system will resume at a very slower pace while still producing future releases.

“This strategic move enables uninterrupted development, ensuring stability for the runway to launch multiple products. The strategic refocusing also makes Star Atlas more attractive to capital partners with shared values,” Star Atlas said.

What is Star Atlas?

Launched in 2021, Star Atlas is a futuristic space-themed strategy game built on the Solana blockchain. Players collect, create, and trade non-fungible tokens (NFTs) representing in-game items within the Star Atlas. Like other Web3 games, game players have total control of their virtual space. 

Star Atlas uses a dual token economy system based on the ATLAS and POLIS tokens. While ATLAS is a medium of exchange that players use to pay for items and receive rewards for completing tasks, POLIS is the governance token of the game that creates a fully decentralized ecosystem where players can decide on the game’s future development.