You have to feel sorry for the guys.

Today, recognised developers Atari announced plans for substantial staff layoffs in the very near future, cutting its current workforce by an astronomical 20% which includes amongst it almost 26% of the company's administration staff.

The layoffs, which will be completed by July 31st, comes in the wake of the departure of former Atari CEO and general industry legend Bruno Bonnell from Atara and its parent company Infrogrames in early April, and his subsequent replacement by Patrick Leleu. The company's redundancy plan is expected to set Atari back somewhere between $800,000 and $1.1 million in restructuring charges.

Even in the face of tragedy, Atari CEO and president David Pierce remains the eternal optimist, and is confident that this restructuring will help alleviate some of the company’s ever-growing financial troubles, "We expect that today's reorganization will continue to reduce Atari's general and administrative cost. These actions, though difficult, are a significant first step in reorganizing Atari and demonstrate our commitment to restoring shareholder value."

I blame E.T. .

Tags : atara : Bruno Bonnell : imfrogrames : layoffs : staff cuts

Comments

By: Dragonsoul On: 10:39 May 10th, 2007 Offline	That sucks. What financial hardships were they going through? What caused this? Lay-offs are a pretty common way to reduce costs but 20 percent is a pretty high percentile. My company went through layoffs and it was always demoralizing. They'll need to work on employee satisifaction if they don't want to see major internal problems.

By: Corrine On: 11:00 May 10th, 2007 Offline	Holy crap, Atari. Do you have any answers for the questions Dawn posted? I'm curious about them myself.