Humble Games \u201crestructured\u201d and reportedly laid off its 36-person team last week<\/a>. The publisher, which is part of the IGN-owned Humble Bundle, started helping developers release games in 2017<\/a> and published notable games like Slay the Spire<\/em> and Signalis<\/em>. The resulting fallout from the layoffs has left developers working with the publisher uncertain about many plans for future games, leaving their console ports in jeopardy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Amir Fassihi, studio director of Dead Mage, the team behind the in-development Wizard of Legend 2,<\/em> is worried that the restructuring could impact their project. \u201cWe do not want to make any changes,\u201d Fassihi tells The Verge<\/em>. \u201cHowever, we\u2019re unsure what changes will be forced on us because everyone in the publisher we collaborated with in the past 2.5 years is suddenly gone.\u201d Now, Dead Mage has to \u201cwait and hope that the new team will deliver the various publishing services that we expected from Humble Games.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The \u201cnew team,\u201d according to a report from Aftermath<\/em><\/a> and three of the developers I spoke with, is the Powell Group, a video game consulting company<\/a>. The Powell Group and Humble Games didn\u2019t reply to requests for comment. In a post last week<\/a>, Humble Games didn\u2019t mention the Powell Group\u2019s involvement, only saying that \u201csupporting our development partners and assisting former team members remains our top priority\u201d and that \u201cwe are committed to making this transition as smooth as possible for everyone involved.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Developers are mostly worried about console ports, which Humble Games seemed to have a major hand in for some of the projects it worked on.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWe are now in a difficult situation when it comes to updating the console ports, as both porting and QA support was tied into our deal with Humble,\u201d Squid Shock Studios, developer of the newly released B\u014d: Path of the Teal Lotus<\/em>, said in a post on Monday<\/a>. (The game is available on PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch in addition to Steam.) \u201cWe are actively pursuing all available avenues to allow us to roll out updates to console versions, but we regret to say this may take some time to put in place.\u201d The studio is also planning to launch a Patreon<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Coral Island<\/em> developer Stairway Games said last week<\/a> that the impact of the restructuring \u201cremains uncertain for all things related to consoles.\u201d The game is out on Xbox Series X \/ S, PlayStation 5, and Steam, with a Switch port in the works. The team has a hotfix for its 1.1 update \u201cnearing release\u201d on Steam, but \u201cwe have no idea how to get this update out to other platform players as we don\u2019t have the backend permission on console platforms to push updates out,\u201d Stairway said. \u201cWe only have access to the Steam backend.\u201d Stairway is offering Kickstarter backers who are still waiting for the Switch release the option<\/a> to get a Steam key instead.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cChanging publishers would be an extremely uphill battle\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Even if developers wanted to make a change from Humble Games as a result of the restructuring, that might be difficult. \u201cTo the best of my understanding, Humble Games is fulfilling their contractual obligations to us, so changing publishers would be an extremely uphill battle,\u201d says Matthew Taylor of Rolling Hills<\/em> developer Catch & Release.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Not every studio appears to have been significantly impacted, and things do seem to be improving for developers since the restructuring. Cody Greenhalge, technical director at #Blud<\/em> developer Exit 73 Studios, tells The Verge<\/em> that the Powell Group has \u201cworked well with us and we are hopeful our game won\u2019t have any long lasting effects from this ordeal.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Taylor says that the Powell Group has set Catch & Release up with a new release manager, producer, and back catalog specialist. \u201cIt\u2019s still too early to know how efficiently all these new folks can work together and get onboarded quickly, but in the case of our game we only need someone to help us get new updates to Microsoft and manage discounts and events, so I think we\u2019ll be OK,\u201d Taylor says. \u201cIf we were working on a game still in development or having very recently released, I\u2019d be way more stressed.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n