Team behind Lego 2K Drive suffers layoffs

These are the kinds of stories I hate to talk about, but they are a part of the news cycle we cover here at GameSided. Several staff at Visual Concepts South have announced they were laid off last week. 3D Artist Katlynn Woodard said the majority of her team was let go.

This is the second layoff for Visual Concepts in a year's time, as Sept. 23 also saw a round of layoffs. It's a trying time in our industry, to put it mildly. More than 9,000 jobs have been lost in the past six months, with Microsoft alone laying off more than 2000 employees. Gaming media have not been immune either. I recently wrote about the horrendous closing of Game Informer, GameStop's in-house gaming publication.

This team worked on the NBA 2K franchise, but may be best known for Lego 2K Drive, an ambitious racing game featuring everyone's favorite blocky characters. It played to rave reviews, but racing is an extremely competitive genre. It currently holds a Metacritic rating of 73.

Part of why Legos work so well in toys and gaming is that with enough time and creativity they can be anything. In Lego 2K Drive, that anything included cars, boats, and other vehicles. Lego 2K Drive was a PlayStation Plus monthly game in December 2023, but that failed to turn its fortunes around.

Fortnite, the 800 lb, gorilla of gaming franchises, also entered the space with a Lego partnership and its own Rocket Racing targeting the same group of gamers. It doesn't ever feel good to lose your job, even less so when you've made a cool game that thousands of people enjoy. Here's hoping everybody affected by these layoffs makes a quick return to the industry and can keep creating wonder for us.