Yeti Town publisher hit with massive layoffs two months after lawsuit

Update: A 6waves Lolapps rep confirmed that the layoffs are unrelated to the ongoing lawsuit with Spry Fox.

Social games publisher, 6waves Lolapps, laid off much of its internal development team today.

The timing of the layoffs is interesting, as it comes just a few months after a lawsuit brought by independent developer, Spry Fox, against 6waves Lolapps. According to the lawsuit, after meeting with Spry Fox about publishing Triple Town, 6waves Lolapps published its own game, Yeti Town, using all of the gameplay elements from Triple Town without the permission of Spry Fox. The lawsuit is still on-going.

Yeti Town was originally developed by Escalation Studios, a developer that was purchased by 6waves Lolapps shortly before the release of Yeti Town. Staffers of Escalation Studios, as well as another internal 6waves Lolapps development house, Smartron5, were directly impacted by the layoffs. Most impacted, however, was the internal team working on the Ravenwood series of social games. A 6waves Lolapps rep confirmed that all development on that series will now be handed by external developers.

In a statement released to Inside Social Games, 6waves Lolapps CEO, Rex Ng, is quoted as saying that the company "will now focus on working with independent developers to launch and grow their mobile and social games...As a result we have restructured the company to focus on key functions which include developer outreach, product advisory, user growth initiatives and our publishing platform. The re-structuring means that we will have more resources to continue our leadership in the social and mobile game publishing space."

We've reached out to 6waves Lolapps to see if there is any connection between the layoffs and Yeti Town's legal issues. We'll update this story when we hear back.