UK games studio Bossa has made a third of its staff redundant.

That's according to GamesIndustry.biz, which has confirmation from the developer that it had made layoffs at the end of 2023. Sources told the outlet that 19 people have been cut, while Bossa itself says that 40 people still work at the studio.

The layoffs are reportedly mostly in the company's quality assurance and production departments. Staff not based in the UK are also apparently impacted.

As for why Bossa has made these cuts, co-founder Henrique Olifiers says that they were the result of a "perfect storm of events" such as increased costs of operations and 'delayed funding decisions'.

"Resulting from this blue moon situation, we had to make the difficult decision to reshape the studio to reflect the position we find ourselves in at the end of this year, focusing all our efforts now on Lost Skies," Olifiers said.

"This means we find ourselves in the heartbreaking position of having to let roughly one third of the studio go – amongst them, some of our closest colleagues.

"While we are doing our utmost to support them, we would appreciate any help our industry peers can give in spreading the word about these great people – or even better, hiring them as part of your team. You'll be hard-pressed to find a better game development professional than one of these Bossians, whom we'll vouch for without hesitation.

"We often say that making games is hard, but nothing is harder than seeing people you admire being let go. Ultimately, we tried our very best to avoid being in this position, and we're truly sorry for where we have landed."

In 2022, Bossa sold all of its older IP to TinyBuild for $3 million.