Capcom announced today that they have a laid off a number of their American employees as part of a restructuring initiative within the company. Among those laid off was Capcom USA senior VP Christian Svensson, who was well known in the gaming community for his candid interactions with fans (and critics) of the company.
“After nearly eight years, it is my final day at Capcom,” Svensson wrote in a post on Google Plus. “This departure is not a bad thing for me and it’s happening mostly because I’d suggested it during the early planning for today’s reorg. While I wish the company the best of luck, Capcom is going in a different direction and the need for people at my level, relative to other areas, is lacking. Those who know me well, know that I’ve been ready to go for quite some time.”
“We tried some things that worked. We tried others that didn’t. We fought fights that were worth fighting and even won a few. I’m proud of what we accomplished,” Svensson said.
Svensson has been the public face of the company in recent years, and he frequently posted on the Capcom Unity message boards to directly interact with fans and address their questions or complaints personally. He played a large role in helping to repair Capcom’s public image after the company made a series of… questionable business decisions that pissed off a lot of gamers (namely, cancelling Mega Man Legends 3 and releasing the upgraded Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 just months after the original game came out,) and he also lobbied hard to get the latest Monster Hunter and Phoenix Wright games localized for Western territories.
In case you couldn’t tell, Svensson was one of the few people at Capcom that I still had some faith in, and I’m kind of worried that Capcom’s old bad habits will make a return now that Svensson isn’t acting as a voice of sanity for the company.
Svensson isn’t ready to announce his next job yet, but in the meantime, he says he’ll be working with the other employees that Capcom laid off today in order to help find them new jobs.
