Key Notes
- Yellow Brick Games employees have reported job losses across art, programming, QA and level design, while the total number affected remains undisclosed.
- The Canadian studio was co-founded by former Dragon Age creative director Mike Laidlaw and released Eternal Strands in January 2025.
- The available reports do not establish a reason for the cuts, a current workforce total or a decision to close the studio.
Yellow Brick Games, the independent Canadian studio co-founded by former Dragon Age creative director Mike Laidlaw, has been hit by layoffs, according to employees’ public posts. The departures affect multiple development disciplines at the maker of Eternal Strands, but the total number of jobs lost has not been disclosed.
Journalist Chris Kerr flagged the job cuts on October 6, noting that the developer has offices in Quebec City and Montreal. Rock Paper Shotgun subsequently reported on LinkedIn accounts from affected staff and said it had contacted the studio for comment.
The report did not establish a reason for the redundancies or provide a company-wide headcount. It is therefore unclear how much of the team has been affected, or whether the departures form part of a broader restructuring.
Departures Across Several Development Roles
The employees identified in the report include a senior environment and hard-surface artist, a graphics engineer, a software programmer, a QA lead and a senior level designer. Their accounts indicate that the job losses extend across art, engineering, testing and design rather than one publicly identified department.
Those posts provide evidence of individual departures, not a complete list of redundancies. Without an updated staffing figure or a statement from management, they cannot establish the proportion of the workforce that has been cut.
The studio’s earlier disclosures provide some scale. Its 2024 self-publishing announcement described a team of 68 developers working between Quebec City and Montreal. That is a historical figure, rather than a verified headcount immediately before the latest layoffs. The studio’s press webpage also describes more than 60 employees, but still refers to its debut game as being in production.
From Dragon Age Veterans to Eternal Strands
Yellow Brick Games was founded in November 2020 by Laidlaw, Thomas Giroux, Jeff Skalski and Frédéric St-Laurent B. The founders brought experience from BioWare, Ubisoft and Electronic Arts, with credits across franchises including Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Watch Dogs and Assassin’s Creed.
At its formation, the Quebec City-based developer had 15 employees and described an ambition to make original games through a smaller, flexible team. Laidlaw joined as chief creative officer. The company subsequently expanded while building the fantasy action-adventure that became Eternal Strands.
In 2024, Yellow Brick Games announced that it would self-publish its first game. Management presented the decision as a way to control the studio’s ambitions and reach players directly. That establishes the company’s publishing structure, but does not explain why it is now reducing staff.
Eternal Strands launched on January 28, 2025 for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. The single-player game follows Brynn, a magic-wielding adventurer exploring the Enclave. Its combat combines weapons, fire, ice and telekinesis with environmental interactions and the ability to climb large enemies.
The Staffing Picture Remains Incomplete
The reports arrive during another period of job losses across game development. We recently covered employee accounts of redundancies at Hellblade developer Ninja Theory, where the staffing changes followed a separate, publicly described ownership and closure process.
Yellow Brick Games’ circumstances should be assessed on their own evidence. The employee reports establish that people have lost their jobs, while the studio’s explanation and the full scale of the cuts remain unknown. They do not establish that Yellow Brick Games is closing or that a particular sales result caused the layoffs.
