Shroud of the Avatar developer Portalarium has announced layoffs as the team scales down.

Founded by old-school RPG veteran Richard Garriott, the Texas-based studio was responsible for creating Shroud of the Avatar - billed as the developer’s return to vast narrative roleplaying adventures.

“Now that we are almost complete fulfilling our Kickstarter promises, we are adjusting our team size to better match our current monthly revenue,” said executive producer Starr Long on the game’s forum. “This will give us the balance we need to begin work on Episode 2 while ensuring we can support the online service. To do that means having, at least for now, a smaller team.”

The studio’s smaller team will be focussed on maintaining and improving existing content, before starting work on the next phase of the MMOs development.

“Right now we will shift our focus from creating new content to polishing our existing systems. This means making a stronger new user experience, fixing bugs, reworking the quest system, performance improvements, user interface polish, and more.”