Breaking: Perpetual Entertainment Lays Off 40

We've received information from a credible source that Perpetual Entertainment has laid off 40 employees from their Gods and Heroes team earlier this morning.

San Francisco-based Perpetual is developing the upcoming Gods and Heroes and Star Trek Online MMOGs. Last year, the company laid off a number of contract workers, but our source tells us in this case the workers were internal to Perpetual.

Calls to Perpetual's offices weren't immediately returned.

Update: Chris McKibbin, President of Perpetual, spoke with Gamasutra about the layoffs. He also spoke with The Escapist's sister site WarCry.

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"The size and bar of content creation is very high and requires a pretty sizable team," he said, "The process of really play-tuning and balancing takes a much smaller, more focused and agile team, and so that is the transition right now."

Translation: Star Trek Online will never ship.

What a great way to reward the group of people that actually completed their work on time. The best part was not getting any severance package. They laid off all the people without giving them anything. I hope the 2 founders don't lose any sleep while cashing in their $250,000 per year paychecks.

Serves you right for not seeing the writing on the wall.