Disney Interactive Studios has laid off staff and cancelled the much-anticipated game Pirates of the Caribbean: Armada of the Damned at its Vancouver studio Propaganda Games.
A laid-off employee, who wished to be anonymous, said that close to 100 people lost their jobs Thursday. Calls and e-mails to Disney Interactive were not returned, but web magazine Kotaku quoted Angela Emery, Disney Interactive Studios vice-president of communications, as saying the studio’s big title for 2011 is off the books.
“Disney Interactive Studios confirms the cancellation of the Pirates of the Caribbean: Armada of the Damned video game, which was scheduled to be released in 2011,” Emery said. “As a result of this decision, Disney Interactive Studios completed a restructuring of Propaganda Games, its Vancouver, B.C., internal studio, affecting one of the studio’s two development teams.”
“Restructuring” means lost jobs, and the laid-off employee said close to half the workforce is gone.
The company still plans a Dec. 7 release of Tron: Evolution, another Propaganda game tied to a Disney movie release, the shot-in-Vancouver Tron: Legacy.
Cancellation of the Pirates game comes as a surprise, because it was timed to coincide with the 2011 release by Walt Disney Pictures of the fourth film in the franchise, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. But the game had nothing to do with the 2011 film, and was more closely tied to the first Pirates movie.
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