NCSoft's North American operation, based in Austin, recently fired 70 of its 300 employees, according to Gamespot. The company told GSpot that none of the publisher's development teams have been affected by the firings, with the Tabular Rasa team still hiring.

The company's prepared comment sought to cast the layoffs as a response to vagaries all publishers in the online space are subject to. "The online games industry is one that is continually changing with the scaling up and down of business based on product launches and product development schedules," the statement read in part.

But it also points to a more localized reason behind the layoffs—a slowdown in upcoming NCsoft launches: "As the company continues to grow its live products and prepares its next set of major online game releases for later in 2006 and 2007, the company sees a slowdown in its launch pattern and the need to streamline its business."

Site f13.net, which first reported on the firings, blamed the firings on Auto Assault. The site, quoting an unnamed developer-only message board, wrote that the car-themed massively multiplayer online game has less than 10,000 subscribers. That compares to City of Heroes and City of Villians, which has been at 150,000 subscribers for more than two years, according to NCSoft.

F13 goes on to say that the firings were mostly in the GM, tech support and QA departments. NCSoft denies the numbers reported on F13 were "not just barely wrong, but all wrong."

It's too bad that Auto Assault isn't doing better. Developer NetDevil is a Colorado-based company, but more importantly I think the game is quite well put together. I've met with the NetDevil folk numerous times, including on their gold day. The last time I spoke with them, Scott Brown told me that the game could make or break his studio.

I'll keep my fingers crossed for you guys.

NCsoft-Austin lays off 70 [GameSpot]

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