游戏工业如火如荼，经常能看到大型公司的并购新闻，开发者裁员的消息其实并不多见。

second life

Second Life第二人生的开发者Linden Lab宣布公司裁撤30%的员工。据称此举在于为Linden Lab节约更多的运营成本，和扩张到社交游戏和手机游戏领域。裁撤的员工主要来源于产品部门和开发部门的合并。

Linden Lab位于旧金山，他们试图在接下来的市场运作中获得更多的商业机会，同时向基于浏览器的WEB游戏或者社交游戏以及手机游戏领域进行扩张。

Linden Lab创建于1999年，在美国、欧洲和亚洲拥有350名员工。旗下的Second Life第二人生在玩家方面表现相当出色，5月份的时候达到826000位玩家，同比去年净增13%；营收方面2010年的首个极度就达到了1600万美元，同比去年净增30%。

对于这样一家运转良好，获利颇丰的游戏公司的裁员举措确实让人看不明白。公司首席执行官Mark Kingdon表示，本次裁员重组将有助于他们在Second Life第二人生方面向用户提供更好的服务。

第二人生

Second Life creator Linden Lab will lay off approximately 30 percent of its staff as part of a restructuring designed to improve its “geographic and cost efficiencies”, and extend its virtual marketplace to browsers/mobile apps.

The San Francisco-headquarted company says it wants to increase focus on its consumer business and make investments that will make its virtual goods marketplace more accessible and popular with users through browser-based and mobile applications.

Its restructuring and 30 percent staff reductions will come as Linden Lab merges its product and engineering divisions, consolidates its software development teams in North America, and “reconfigures” its customer support group to provide more scalable services.

Founded in 1999, the company currently has some 350 workers across U.S., Europe, and Asia. Though many other virtual worlds have been in decline in the past year, Second Life’s population has actually grown, reaching its monthly unique user peak in March at 826,000 users, a 13 percent year-over-year jump.

The virtual world company also recently reported a record quarter for user-to-user transactions in Second Life for the first three months of 2010, as those transactions reached $160 million, a 30 percent increase over the amount recorded during the same period last year.

Linden Lab says that this restructuring better aligns the company with two longer-term goals aimed at making Second Life more accessible and relevant: creating a browser-based virtual world experience (thus eliminating the need to download software), and extending the virtual world to popular social networks.

“We’ve emerged from a two-year investment period during which, among other things, we’ve spent a considerable amount of time improving reliability and the overall user experience,” says Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon.

He adds, “Today’s announcement about our reorganization will help us make Second Life even simpler, more enjoyable, relevant and engaging for consumers starting with their first experience. It will also enable us to invest in bringing 3D to the web and will strengthen our profitability.”