Well, damn. I wondered why my article on Wizards layoffs in August was suddenly getting hits, and it’s because there are more – a lot more. Lisa Stevens of Paizo confirms on ENWorld that the layoffs include:

Randy Buehler (VP of digital gaming)

Andrew Finch (director of digital games)

Stacy Longstreet (senior art director)

Julia Martin (editor)

William Meyers (creative manager, digital design)

Dave Noonan (game designer)

Jennifer Paige (online community manager) (aka Solice)

Jennifer Powers (marketing)

Jonathan Tweet (game designer)

Shockingly big names! And it sucks that it’s right before the holidays, but that’s all trying to make your year-end numbers look good.

So what does this mean for WotC strategy? They just cut a lot of their digital guys. Are they giving up? Or just taking a huge setback? Cutting down on 4e’ers isn’t unexpected – people are saying it’s not performing to expectation and heck, they cut people after the 3e launch too.

My personal favorite here is Tweet – IMO, too talented to be working on D&D, though I’m sure a regular paycheck and health benefits were saying otherwise. Time for a new version of Over the Edge or Unknown Armies!!! I’d love to see Tweet land with Pelgrane, Paizo, or even Hidden City Games if they are going to do more RPGs than just Donut or whatnot. He did a lot with Atlas but they’ve about given up on RPGs. Heck, apparently Mongoose is growing like crazy…

Anyway, best of luck to all the newly jobless.