Firefall summer crunch led to Red 5 hiring former BioWare and 38 Studio employees

Staff for Red 5 Studios' PC shooter Firefall has been beefed up with employees gained from layoffs at 38 Studios and BioWare Austin.

Speaking with PC Gamer at gamescom, Firefall's lead class designer Dave Williams said the firm had to hire more people as development has lead to “having to crunch harder than we ever have” to get the beta's summer update ready.

“About 80 percent or 90 percent of the people we’ve added in the past few months have been from 38 and Bioware," said Williams. "Two months ago we had a staff of 60, and now we’re at just over 100.

"We needed to increase our ability to create content. We’re treading the edge of the knife to some extent. But the people we’ve added – we’re pretty careful about. We’ve probably spent a pure month on recruiting, which hurt production. We ended up having to crunch harder than we ever have to get this patch done. We’ve never really crunched at Red 5, but this last month has been an absolutely a true crunch.”

Williams said while the recent lay-offs at 38 and BioWare were not "good for the industry," the timing worked out for Red 5 in the end.

"The timing of 38 studios and Star Wars dumping all their staff at the same time is really good for us," said Williams. “We’ve found some incredibly talented people who are really happy. It’s allowed us to build up the team quickly."

The summer update for Firefall will re-balance classes with new weapons and abilities.