BERLIN — In a move that has gaming veterans describing as both unprecedented and inevitable, Full Circle Studios has announced plans to reduce its workforce by 14% while simultaneously establishing a new internal division dedicated to processing the psychological damage of said layoffs.
The studio, best known for the Skate series and their refusal to put battle passes in a game about skating downhill in slow motion, stated in a press release that the layoffs are being handled with “unprecedented compassion and bureaucratic thoroughness.”
“Our team is deeply committed to supporting every employee impacted by restructuring,” said Full Circle HR Director Chad Whittier-III. “This includes mandatory grief taxonomy workshops, where each remaining employee must select an emotional category for every colleague who was laid off. This allows us to track the collective trauma in real-time.”
Under the new Compassion-First protocol, employees remaining at Full Circle will be required to complete a detailed assessment for each departed colleague. Categories include “Abandoned by the Developer” (for any Skate sequels missing since 2018), “Crunch Culture Survivor” (for those who worked 100+ hour weeks on a previous title), and “Microtransaction Trauma Zone” (for staff members who have seen their entire career reduced to DLC grind optimization).
“We cannot leave anyone behind,” Whittier-III told a press conference outside a nearby Wendy’s, where the entire leadership team is scheduled to dine on breakfast sandwiches for the next decade as penance. “Our grief taxonomy ensures we’re properly cataloging the emotional weight of corporate cost-cutting.”
The Compassion-First initiative comes after Night Street Games announced they were ceasing operations while simultaneously refusing to include battle passes or loot boxes. In a statement that Full Circle is currently using as a legal template, Night Street said: “We built a game that respects players. We didn’t monetize their suffering. We didn’t tell them to buy cosmetic skins. We just said the game is finished and we’re leaving.”
This has inspired Full Circle’s management to retroactively classify their remaining team members as “Victims of Greed-Based Gaming Industry” and begin calculating trauma compensation based on how long each employee stayed. Those who survived a full three-year contract are now eligible for a “Loyalty Discount” of 1% on all future console purchases, provided they can prove they don’t have a pending lawsuit against the studio for unpaid overtime.
The layoffs also come as Full Circle works on a new Skate installment that is rumored to feature a battle pass where players earn coins for completing trick combinations. The studio has denied this, stating:
“Full Circle never monetizes trick combos. We monetize nostalgia. We monetize the fact that your childhood skateboarding dream is now a $69.99 premium feature with three skins.”
According to a source who spoke on condition of anonymity because they’re afraid of becoming the next statistic in Full Circle’s grief taxonomy:
“They’re doing the math. They’re counting heads. They’re calculating what percentage of the team can be ’emotionally preserved’ before they declare the rest ‘unrecoverable trauma cases.’ I heard HR is considering a program where they’ll hire actors to pretend to be the laid-off employees and pay the real people a salary just to stand there and listen to the actors read their own job descriptions.”
The studio’s new headquarters in Burnaby, British Columbia, has already been retrofitted with a “Trauma Response Room” where employees can file their grief taxonomy forms in complete silence. A separate “Compassion Compliance Officer” position has been created, tasked with ensuring that every employee’s emotional state is properly documented in the studio’s new “Employee Soul Ledger.”
Meanwhile, the Skate game itself will reportedly be delayed to 2029, giving the development team more time to practice their new emotional processing techniques.
“We’re not abandoning the players,” a Full Circle spokesperson told a gaming news outlet. “We’re giving them time to process the trauma of waiting for a sequel to a game about skating downhill. It’s actually therapeutic.”
The industry reaction has been mixed. Some veterans are calling it a “corporate human rights nightmare that should be prosecuted as a war crime against creative labor.” Others are simply confused about whether Full Circle is the victim or the perpetrator.
In related news, Ubisoft announced layoffs at Red Storm Entertainment, where 105 people are being laid off while the studio remains open to process their emotional departures in a similar fashion. Full Circle’s legal team is currently reviewing whether the Compassion-First initiative can be adapted for broader industry use.
For now, anyone seeking employment at Full Circle will need to apply through a new “Trauma-Adjusted Hiring Protocol,” which requires applicants to complete a 45-minute session on how to emotionally process the trauma of being an unemployed gamer in 2026.