#fusebox layoffs

With S4 coming out on a seperate app and Fusebox continuing to insist their “””codevelopment””” model is just as good, I wanted to update this list with the people who made LITG the game that we love. People marked with asterisks are still looking for work/self employed, so if you can support their past and current projects it’s more important for them.

If you're looking for information on what happened, click my tag 'fusebox layoffs' on this post

Please let me know if I’m missing anyone/projects to link

This little project devolved into me playing demos, reading work, listening to multiple podcasts, and enjoying their indie content in earnest. It introduced me to so many new IF adjacent things, some of which I’m still enjoying playing. I highly recommend going down the rabbit hole.

Writers

Andrea D’Acunzo: twitter | website | working with Quantum Soup Studios who have a stealth/puzzle PC game out with this beautiful art style 

**Anna Winterstein: twitter | website |  She has a ton of small game demos, but my favorite is her short story The Colors of Sand. Fantasy gaysssss. It looks like she’s currently working with 3ofCups and/or Electric Square, but she’s got a ton of small art projects to support on her website

Ben Kaestner-Frenchman: twitter | Just super fun to follow and his WIP novel looks super interesting, I’m not sure if there’s much to do to support it at this point but *eyes emoji*, He’s also currently working with Electric Square

**Ben Sabin: twitter | website | Again, another fun twitter follow (can’t convince me to get twitter lmfao)

Carles Salas: linkedin | he’s currently working with Neon Play, who have a bunch of idle games on the app store

**Chavonne Brown: twitter | website | One of the more active projects I found was the ttrpg game Daemonologie which I have not played but might pick up if I make friends lmfao | He’s also an editor at Fiyah Magazine and I haven’t purchases any of their editions yet but it’s sci fi and fantasy short stories so I definitely need to 

**Courtney Byrne: twitter | website | The poetry fragments on their website were uh.... steamy 

Daniel Nicholson-Coombes: twitter | website | He designs logos if anyone’s in the market, also he’s working with Dlala studios  who are working on an arcade/smash type xbox game

David Evans: linkedin | Working with Netspeak Games on Sunshine Days (my beloved)

Ed Sibley: twitter | He’s working with Netspeak games and they’ve released Sunshine Days which I downloaded from a tumblr ad before realizing he was involved lmao. It’s reminiscent of animal crossing/stardew/every mmo from the 2010s and I’m really enjoying it

**Eir Causey: twitter | website | Actively job searching!! 

Elizabeth Smyth: twitter | website | her spooky games are free to play, super interesting, and well written as shit. It gives me TMA vibes. She’s got a bunch of short twines linked to her twitter and I’m kinda obsessed with her

Fiona Sangster: twitter | medium short stories | Here’s a link to her horror  game demos, not really my cup of tea but if you like first person survival games or undertale adjacent gameplay mechanics maybe you’ll dig them! She also has a bunch of short stories you can check out

Fred Francis: twitter

Frankie Wakefield-Harrey: twitter | looks like she’s freelancing and currently working with Terrible Posture Games, if I had a Nintendo Switch I would 100% buy their game 3 out of 10 

Hannah Powell-Smith: twitter |  patreon | Buy!!! Their text based game Creme de la creme!! (or download it on the app store, the first three chapters are free) I bought it purely out of reparations for the money I’ve spent on gems for LITG and while I’ve only got through four chapters so far I’m enjoying it. Scratches my dark academia/royalcore itch. They also wrote one called Blood Money which is about half the length but not really my cup of tea because it’s a mafia AU but maybe you’re into that! It has really good reviews on the app store!

**Heidi McDonald: twitter | The best ongoing project I can find is the book chapters she’s written about video game development and a book about sexuality in gaming. If you’re interested in that, check her books out. Actively job searching!!

Ian Michael Waddell: twitter | podcast | He has a huge backlog of work but my fave is the text based game and his podcast. I’ve started listening and am? Enjoying it more than I thought I would? They review a bunch of IF games that were made specifically for one IF competition and it’s been fun to get recs. They’ve got 8 episodes, and they’re all about an hour a piece which is *chefs kiss* I lowkey judged and played all the games submitted for 2021 and was really excited that this introduced me to it

Ines Robin: twitter | artstation She’s taking commissions for portraits through DMs, and seems to have a new project in the works

**Kaj Jensen: website 

Leah Muwanga-Magoye: instagram | website

Leigh Alexander: twitter | website | She’s got a TON of really cool articles about sci fi concepts intermingled with activism and is a writer with Reigns and also an odd blog that seems like it’d be super well suited to be on tumblr

Lizzie Huxley-Jones: twitter | website | books | They have a rec list on their website of books with autistic representation, and I’ve read one of them already, added some others to my to-read list. 

Luke Duffy: twitter | portfolio/website He’s working with Frontier Games now, and they make some really mainstream titles like Roller Coaster Tycoon and Jurassic World. Good for him. 

M. Vittoria Patti: twitter | I can’t bring myself to download it, but she now works for Football Manager the game if you’re into sports game, consider playing!

**Maria Callas: twitter 

Nathanael Yau: linkedin | if you have more media for him hmu

Rhea Newton: twitter | They’re working with Tributary games so keep an eye out for new content from them- it looks like it’s going to be narrative based and their art style is super cool

Sarah ‘SJ’ Longthorne: twitter | website | Now working with SumoDigital and their game Hood: Outlaws and Legends. If you’re into console or PC gaming, maybe try it out

Seema Iyer: twitter | website   

Artists

Dan Fiddis: Art Portfolio

David Galopim: instagram | He’s working with the app Puzzle Heist now. If you like empire building games like Clash of Clans or Game of Sultans, you’ll love this. The characters do look DOPE af, but the story is a bit lacking and the Match 3/Best Fiends format burnt me out pretty fast. I did play for a couple months, so it’s good enough for that.

Katie Jackson: art portfolio

Leda Chung: twitter | She’s now working with Tripledot Studio. I played Word Hop for a couple of days and enjoyed it, a lot of their games are bubblepop/solitaire/brain teaser kind of thing, so if you like that support them. It looks like they might be working on a Match 3 ala Lily’s Garden or Homescape?

Paul Alexandrescu: art portfolio

Pedro Alves: twitter

Music

Lauren Middleton: Buisness Facebook | fiverr  | instagram | portfolio | soundcloud She’ll compose music for video game and adjacent projects through fiverr, and just has a lot of samples uploaded for listening

Engineers/Product Data

Alice Cheng: I can’t find any public facing social media for her, but it looks like she’s working with Marmalade Games now, and they do a lot of board gamey type apps in you’re interested in that. 

Anita Ghoddoomi-Zadeh: Again no public networking (which makes sense), but she’s currently working with Space Ape Games, which chiefly seems to make an arcade/tapping music app.

Ariane Sivam: I can’t find any social media, but I did find a podcast episode (and have since listened to the entire podcast, highly rec!) where she talks about why LGBTQ+ stories are so important to tell through mobile games *eyeball emojis* It’s episode 6, not sure if the link worked correctly

Dave Lewis: twitter 

Joshua Samuels: twitter 

Robert Bateman: twitter

Customer Support (show them some love because some of yall were ANNOYING with that ‘Help’ button

Shelley Coates: twitter | 

We should keep in mind that the people who did the writing and art for S4 are no longer benefitting from it. I can't imagine how hard it is to see your art, your characters, your stories, marketed completely out of your control or input.

We've seen this shit with so many different developers, Blizzard, EA, What Pumpkin, etc etc now Fusebox. It especially hurts from a studio so small like FB.

FB owes their entire success to their writers and artists. The only thing that made them stand out was the realistic writing and the distinct art style. The fact that they laid off all their writers to pivot to Matchmaker, when Matchmaker is literally just a basic soulless regurgitation of the stories made by those writers (and the stories that aren't are super bland) is so pathetic. You can only rip off original ideas and remix ugly cursed versions of characters whose assets you already purchased for so long.

Because Fusebox killed it ❤️ I know that sounds facetious, but I'm being dead serious.

The fandom was 'most alive' when S2 was coming out (I wasn't actively playing until 2019 but you can still see the posts on reddit and here which got wayyy more notes/comments), and then had a big revival whenever seasons were being released. Now that new content's been stalling and Fusebox has been so shitty, a lot of people are naturally losing interest and leaving the fandom.

But more specifically, Fusebox's decision to pivot to a Match 3 style game is and will continue to kill the fandom.

For reference, I play match 3 games pretty regularly- I played Lily's garden for actual years and pick up other story-based match 3 apps periodically- and none of them support the kind of fandom that LITG did. Yes games like Candy Crush have large player bases, but they don't have the creative fandom surrounding the app creating fanfiction, art, and discussion.

If you want evidence of that, Candy Crush Saga (the most played Match 3 game on the app store) has a subreddit with 4,200 subscribers (or whatever the reddit equivalent is called). Gardenscapes has 1,700. While these games have significantly more players than most story games, Episode (9.7k), Lovelink (11.8k), Romance Club (10k), and LITG (13.5k) all have significantly more fans on reddit. And that's only counting reddit, not twitter/tumblr/facebook. So if you're talking purely fandom, story games are just more conducive to cultivating fandoms than match 3s are.

But that's just it, Fusebox has decided to prioritize reaching more players over cultivating a smaller, more dedicated audience.

This isn't me sucking my own dick, but thank you. Not for the compliment, but for the response because it kinda feels like I’ve been shouting into the void about this. Or that the conversations that ARE happening aren't about the right thing. People are more mad about S4 being cancelled than they’re mad about the people who WROTE and CREATED S4 (and our beloved S2) being fired and mistreated. And I feel like that’s a disservice.

Maybe part of the reason is the narrative’s not in one centralized place or people don’t know what’s going on. I’m working on a timeline based on what we know allegedly went down (obv the former FB employees are all under NDA so they can’t corroborate any of it), so hopefully that will bring a couple more eyes to what actually happened instead of just bitching about it in general.

Like just take a second and read the independent article about the conflict with the writers prior to the layoff.

Read the article about the layoff.

Read the glassdoor reviews of Fusebox

The reason this all has gotten so fully under my skin is I always thought Fusebox was a smaller dev studio. I felt comfortable spending money on LITG because I felt represented by the stories and that the creators and business were the kind of people I wanted to support.

And the creators absolutely are. You can tell from the games how much love and thought the staff put into their narratives, and tbh the thing that drew me to it in the first place was the stench of queer creators in the mix. So many of FB’s former writers were awesome LGBTQ creators, and it’s clear in elements of the story that diversity was attempted time and time again (to varying success obv). I never thought a game about a reality TV show that’s so heteronormative and sexist would resonate with me, but it has. And that’s because of the Fusebox team, not the branding or the marketing or the fucking COO.

At so many steps, Fusebox’s management could’ve taken steps to make this Less Shitty. Yes, the decision to pivot to more shallow content that’s easier to create, more universally appealing, and easier to monetize is a good business move. Yes, I don’t like it and I’m sure the old staff at Fusebox didn’t like that decision. It is what it is, all good things must end. But Fusebox owed their staff better during that transition.

Upper management could’ve made that decision way easier to swallow. Instead of clearly and consistently communicating that phasing LITG out and prioritizing matchmaker was the direction, laying out a clear transition plan, and giving the writers and unity engineers a heads up so they could begin to look for other jobs, Fusebox just fucked over their employees unapologetically. They lied to them, continued to reassure them that they had jobs and a place in the company, then were hostile to them over a collective disagreement and fired them entirely.

That decision, to keep everyone on the hook before laying them off all at once, is SO terrible, because it forces all the writers to essentially compete against each other for the open positions at other studios. If there’d been a slower process of letting writers go at different times or giving everyone a heads up that S4 would be the last season and letting them find work at their own pace, then they’d have time to secure positions. But just outright firing everyone, they all had to scramble to find positions in similar roles, either in the same location or remote.

So yeah, I don’t mean to beat a dead horse, but fuck Fusebox.

All of the below is based on articles, tweets from the staff, and dates from screenshots. Especially with the Matchmaker stuff, I’m using the dates I personally accessed the stories- that might not be accurate to when they were actually released to an international audience, just when my phone updated the app. In hindsight, I’m not a great person to do this because I have a shit memory and don’t keep receipts, so if you have any corrections PLEASE lmk either in the dms or replies. 

In sum, the timeline appears to be:

1. Key players left Fusebox in early 2020. 

The one that people are probably most familiar with is David Gallopim, one of the artists who helped define the S2’s distinct style, leaving sometime before March 2020. He seemed to indicate that there was conflict over the new art style of S3, and released assets he’d designed of Harry in his own style (notably way prettier than Harry looks in-game). 

But probably more important to the direction of the company, Michael Othen, one of the co-founders and former CEO, left in July of 2020 (I had thought it was earlier in the year but according to LinkedIn it was July). It’s much more unclear why he left, but it’s notable because he was a huge force in making the game inclusive of LGBTQ characters. 

So all in all, not a great sign when employees who had a huge hand in creating the content and direction of a game that defined its success jump ship. Especially after the game was seemingly hitting its stride, with the host of Love Island (the TV show) doing a sponsored Let’s Play of S3 and projects in the works like Boat Party and CMM.

2. It seems like Fusebox‘s CEO/executives hired new management, either in 2020 or early 2021. Employees complain that the executives don’t understand what it takes to make a game and are pulling the studio in the wrong direction. It’s unclear if the newly hired execs had experience. 

Wil Stephens, the CEO/founder, has been with FB since its inception but also appears to have only founded game distribution ventures and not worked in any development or employment capacity. If that’s the case, maybe the complaints about lack of experience/knowledge about the mechanics of making games work are about him. If not, then some of the newly hired execs would likely be to blame. 

Paul Virapen, COO, was brought on in November of 2020. He’s worked with Disney’s gaming division, Big Pixel studios, Wooga. The quality of that experience is dubious since he headed up the ‘let’s make apps for Apple watches, it’ll be the next big thing’ department… Lol. Notably also, all of his roles had been in the executive/managerial realm, not the development teams, so the complains might have been about him. THIS IS SPECULATION, but I’m willing to bet that Virapen was a if not THE driving force in switching Fusebox’s focus entirely to matchmaker. All the studios he’s worked with have primarily produced and promoted Match 3 games, and he has a background working with big studios that produce games for large international audiences, not small studios making narrative games for limited audiences.

A new Manager of Finances, Ruth Erskine, was brought on in December of 2020

Rob Goddard, a new producer, was brought in January of 2021

Several key operations positions were filled by existing employees being promoted to management- 2 as far as I can tell. But as a whole it seems like December 2020 was a huge shift in leadership for the upper management while a lot of the other teams expanded but kept their old players as well.

3. At some point in late 2020- mid 2021, the executive team made the decision to switch LITG’s focus from a narrative pass-based game to a Match 3 incorporating romance narrative cut scenes. In early 2021, Fusebox teased more content to come while releasing S3 (seemingly referring to Matchmaker and not S4). In the interim between S3 endings and Boat Party’s release they put out an interview confirming the new game will be Match 3 but did seem to indicate that the plan at that time was for Matchmaker to be a side project with a different development team and not replace the main game. Notably, the LITG writers and artists were reassured that their roles will continue to exist (according to the independent article) as they’re working on S4.

3. In September of 2020, Matchmaker became briefly available in the US. That’s when I first downloaded it, at least. It would be added/removed from the google play store multiple times before having a unilateral release in July of 2021. 

Throughout 2020, Matchmaker is available to Asian audiences solely with LITG S1 getting rolled out in incremental updates. 

Eventually, Beanie Quinn is released (March 2021)

LA Noir is released (May 2021)

Seduction Games is released (late May or June 2021- I got the update and played it June 3rd, but hadn’t opened the app for a month or so. It might have come out before then, which is unfortunate for this timeline since it’s so inextricably linked to the open letter and layoff dates)

LITG S2 is released (only like 20 levels of it) the same month- June 19th for me. Notably, all of these stories are only released to an international audience, with the UK and USA still not having access to the app.

4. At the same time, Fusebox’s internal affairs are pretty quiet from 2020-2021, at least on social media. 

S3 comes out in 2020, Boat Party comes out later in the year and finishes in 2021. Post S3 in October of 2021, a survey goes out gauging player interest in new art styles and representation, which was pretty in keeping with past actions and seemed promising for S4. 

Boat Party features a promising cross promotion implementing irl brands into the game. It’s unclear if enough money was made from this on FB or the sponsor’s end to make that strategy viable, but that might’ve impacted management’s outlook for the profitability of LITG.  

Fusebox teases more content for the summer on Instagram, and then follows up and confirms it’ll be a proper season.

5. More key players leave in early 2021

Ed Sibley is still listed as Narrative Direction on LinkedIn, but he’s not credited as a writer on Season 4 (he was on 3,2,and 1) and started work with NetSpeak games in May of 2021, so we can assume he left around then or at least transitioned away from Fusebox then.

Fred Francis, another writer who had been on the team since S1, turns in his resignation ‘weeks’ before the layoffs were announced in late June. So we can assume he made his exit sometime early June or late May.

6. Prior to the release of Seduction games in May/June, staff expressed concern about the biphobia in Seduction Games. No sources have given a specific time when this took place. They were reassured that the problem would be corrected prior to release, but then the story was released as is to an international audience in June. The article released by the Independent is unclear- there might have been discussion prior to the open letter where staff expressed concerns and then were reassured before the game going live. OR the open letter might have been the first expression of concern by the staff. I tend to think the former, and the open letter was a response to Matchmaker going live with Seduction Games anyways, but I have no proof for that. On May 24th, 31 employees sent an open letter of concern regarding the problematic content in Matchmaker. This letter isn’t public, so we don’t know the scope of the employees' concerns or who the employees were.

7. To resolve the situation, a meeting between the staff and at least the COO (likely more than just him though) was held sometime after May 24th. Allegedly, Virapen was disrespectful to the employees who had questions, refused to answer, and ended the meeting early before any resolution was had by closing his laptop and leaving the room. At least 4 HR complaints were made in the wake of that meeting, we do not know the nature of those complaints. 

8. Some time mid-July (maybe July 26th? A writer tweeted about their job ending soon on that date), employees were made aware that the LITG app would move into ‘sunset mode’. It’s unclear what was communicated, but it seems as though S4 will be heavily delayed or cancelled altogether and no future seasons would be made. Writers begin to post about looking for work on Twitter

9. June 30th- The majority of Fusebox writing staff announce on twitter they’re out of work. In addition to the entire writing staff, unity engineers and producers are also let go.

10. July 5th - Fusebox executives respond to an article by MCVUK with a statement asserting they were “consulting with [their] employees on a proposed change to its business model” that would focus on producing Matchmaker content. They also expounded that the move was to secure “cash injections and and continued support from respected investors across the media and gaming industry”

11. July 6th- Fusebox announces that S4 will be delayed from the summer release date and that there is no fixed release date. 

12. August 2nd- three jobs are posted to Fusebox’s careers page on their website, one being Head of Narrative Content. In the job listing, it specifies that they’ll be maintaining existing properties as well as new ones, and that because of the co-development model (re:fusebox outsourcing Matchmaker to another studio) the new Narrative Lead must collaborate with external content creators.