I've been in the social games industry for a couple of years now. Zynga may have gotten more attention for some of its negative tactics, but Lolapps takes the cake for shady social gaming.<p>They consistently provided grossly inflated (by an order of magnitude) numbers for their user counts and revenue. I honestly would not be surprised if they had lied to 6Waves in order get a merger in the first place.<p>They were almost banned from Facebook for selling user data to third parties.<p>Recently, they were contracted to help publish a game developed by an indie. As publishers, they got to see a game that hadn't yet been released. They stalled the indie shop in publishing the game while rushing to create a blatant clone. They then ditched the indie shop and released their own clone.
It's quite stressful when even half the people you know get laid off.<p>I worked at a startup that began expanding very quickly in early 2008 (i.e., the worst possible time in recent history). When the economy collapsed that summer and they couldn't raise capital, they had to do layoffs.<p>That in itself isn't really interesting, but the way they carried out the layoffs was... suboptimal. At some point on a Tuesday, they had the HR manager walking around the cubicle areas, tapping people on the shoulder and calling them in for a meeting. After that, they would return to their desk, pack up their stuff, and leave the building forever.<p>No one really knew what was going on and those of us who hadn't been tapped by this "Angel of Death" were confused and afraid that we would be next on the list. It wasn't until after the herd was culled that management told the rest of us what happened.<p>I'm no HR expert, but there must have been a better way to do that.
"How it feels when EVERYONE you know gets laid off"<p>Perhaps due to my imperfect English, from the title I thought that everyone he knows was laid off, instead of the developers at a former employer he no longer works for.
Such is life as a games company employee. Been there, done that and will likely never go back unless a LOT of things change in that industry.<p>Good luck to all the guys who were laid off, I'm sure things will work out!
If you think the gaming industry is bad you should see how it is in the gambling business. Surprise reduncancies happen all the time, for example morning meetings with all scheduled employees where everyone is told to just go home.<p>When big legislation changes hit it's not uncommon for hundreds of people being fired overnight.
Quite the shock to have the whole studio laid off like that, but I dare say that sort of thing isn't unusual in the games industry at large.<p>I worked at a big publisher studio for quite some time. They laid off people nearly every year, yet it felt relatively 'safe' compared to the rest of the industry.
Oh....boy. Reminds me of the layoff at a social gaming company at which I used to work... Major layoff, and even though I wasn't affected, still felt sad and depressed to see so many people I worked closely with would be gone.<p>It's really tricky for the company... I don't think moral ever came back, and there had been continued attrition after the layoff. :(
I don't know the details of the $35M raising, but it's quite unclear on whether the attempt to estimate their cash on hand was remotely accurate. A $35M round might be tranched to hell and back and a company that isn't hitting promised targets may not get all its tranches (experience speaking :-) ).