“The entire Blue Omega team was laid off today (well, starting Friday). If anyone has job openings, send them my way and I’ll pass them on.” This is never a good way to start off a story, but such were the words from the Twitter account of Geoff Rowland, a programmer from the above mentioned developer, last week.

The development of Damnation, a title notoriously dogged by low review scores, seems to sit at the center of this issue. According to legal hooplah dug up by Shacknews, two companies that Blue Omega had contracted to do work on Damnation, Point of View and the rather awesomely named Velvetelvis Studios, both ended up in lawsuits with the developer. One such instance came when Blue Omega sued Point of View for damages after they were temporarily pulled off the Damnation project. Meanwhile, Velvetelvis supposedly missed deadlines for their contract work, leading to Blue Omega missing their own deadlines with publisher Codemasters.

Any way you slice it, it’s a messy situation. One has to wonder if this may have been responsible for some of Damnation‘s problems. We don’t mean to kick a dog while they’re down, but we have a review of the game coming to CFD! soon. Don’t want to spoil anything, but…yeah. It’s probably not going to be exactly the most glowing of recommendations.