Elite Force 2 developer Ritual recently announced it was forced to lay off most of the game's design team, releasing them on the job market even before the release of the Trek game they worked on.

"As most people know, Ritual Entertainment recently finished Star Trek Elite Force II, a game we are all tremendously proud to have developed," Ritual game designer Tom Mustaine said in a statement. "We had three very engaging projects lined up for the team, but unfortunately, none of them came to actual fruition. We found ourselves unable to maintain multiple AAA teams and were forced to release some of the most gifted game developers back into the industry's talent pool."

The Elite Force II team had been working on the game since August 2001, and were finally done last week (story). According to Ritual fan site Ritualistic, twelve of the company's employees have been laid off, most of them previously part of the Star Trek game's team.

One of the developers who lost his job was level designer Benson Russell, who posted on Ritualistic's forum with his view of the events: "Just to set the record straight, the layoffs occured as a result of not being able to get a gig, so Ritual could not afford to keep a second team. This was NOT because upper management wanted to keep more money for themselves!!!For those of you that are refering to 'this is the usual corporate BS that always happens.. yada... yada... yada.. rabble.. rabble...', you need to get it into your thick skulls that Ritual is NOT this huge corportate company. They're a small independant developer!! There's no heaps of cash just floating around with greedy people trying to stuff it into their pockets!!"

Even as many of the Elite Force II developers are starting to look for new jobs, Ritualistic also reported the first sightings of the game in European stores. More info on this issue can be found at Ritualistic, while the game itself can be pre-ordered via one of the following links: Amazon.com - Amazon.co.uk - Amazon.de.

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