Endless legends: how Amplitude bought their independence back from Sega
Sega are among the big games publishers who are currently feeding large swathes of their business to the flames of profit growth. In September 2023, they cancelled Creative Assembly’s looter shooter Hyenas and announced plans to cut costs across Sega Europe. Last January, they laid off 61 workers at Sega of America in California. Then, they chopped another 240 jobs across Creative Assembly, Hardlight, and other Sega operations in Europe.
Grim times, but there have been brighter moments. In November last year, Endless Legend and Humankind developers Amplitude Studios announced that they were splitting from Sega and going independent, care of a management buyout or MBO. Without wishing to sound too fatalistic about Sega, it put me somewhat in mind of the Millennium Falcon flying out of the exploding Death Star. Amplitude’s co-founder and CEO Romain de Waubert de Genlis tells me, however, that the Amplitude buyout wasn’t an emergency response to Sega’s restructuring. He himself started thinking about going indie over two years ago.