Trainers, we noticed an interesting post on Reddit today, and went ahead to verify if it was true – turns out it is. An independent game studio from Seattle, called Very Very Spaceship (VVS), is a long running game development partner employed by Niantic to work on various aspects of the game.
Today, several VVS employees announced that they have been laid off by the company. One of the laid off VVS employees, Kelsey Martin, is a 3D Character Artist that worked directly on the new Avatars system.
Martin shared his thoughts on LinkedIn, among several other recently laid off employees:
After 4 orbits around the sun, my time at Very Very Spaceship has come to an end. I am very proud of the work we did on Pokémon Go’s Character Creator to add features to make it more inclusive and expressive for players. But now it’s time for my next adventure. If you know of any opportunities for a Senior Character and Game Artist, please let me know. Any help is appreciated.
Curiously, Martin is not the only employee who got laid off and took to LinkedIn to share the news, as Sara Carmen H, a previously employed recruiter at VVS also got canned:
My escape pod was unexpectedly ejected from the spaceship as I was sadly laid off, and yesterday was my last day with Very Very Spaceship.
Very Very Spaceship has been a Niantic partner for years now, with prior engagement in Transformers Heavy Metal, an AR game that never got published. The company claims that they are developing “tentpole features for Pokémon GO that affect the entire player base”, with no further details to back these claims. At the time of this writing, we are not sure what aspects of the game VVS is working on.
By the looks of the layoffs, the reason is definitely not the terribly received Avatar 2.0 update, but we do have to ask an obvious question. If Niantic is planning to fix the new Avatars, why would their partner agency fire the people who originally built them?
Our heart goes out to recently laid off VVS employees. We hope you find new employment soon!
