Rumor: Layoffs at Mythic affect senior designers

Joystiq is rumouring that between 60 and 130 people have been laid off at Mythic.

Some of redundancies are apparently from WAR development staff, supposedly including senior designers.

Mark Jacobs, however, made a statement on the official Warhammer Online site claiming that staffing numbers are attributed to consumer need and progress with game design.

"With respect to customer service, quality assurance and play testing, prior to the launch of WAR, we hired additional people to deal with the rush of demand associated with an MMO launch," he said.

"Since the launch last year, the demand for customer service has gone down as players become more familiar with the game. Obviously, demand for a large QA and play-testing staff also falls after launch. As a result, we saw a staff reduction which is in line with the company-wide initiative."

We've contacted Mark for a further statement.