It looks like the Australian game development community has been hit again by another round of layoffs - this time at a Sega studio. According to GameIndustry.biz, 37 employees have been laid off at Sega Studios Australia in Brisbane. The studios' most recent work was London 2012: The Official Video Game of the Olympic Games. Prior to that the studio went under the name The Creative Assembly Australia and worked on Rome: Total War, Medieval II: Total War and Stormrise.

Electronic Arts has confirmed that it has laid off a number of its staff at EA Canada. The company would not disclose just how many employees were affected by the layoffs. The cuts are part of a restructuring plan at the Vancouver office and its studio in nearby Burnaby. That studio is responsible for the development of such titles as Need For Speed: The Run and FIFA 12.

IGDA Mobile SIG Chair Kevin Dent predicted that THQ would lay off around 170 employees yesterday. It turns out that he was under reporting the carnage at the company. Today it was revealed that THQ plans to let a total of 240 employees go in the next few months. The majority of the staff cuts will be made by the end of the financial year on March 31, 2012, with the rest happening by October.

More than 170 employees have been cut from various THQ studios, including high profile game industry veteran Mark DeLoura (who served as vice president of technology at the company), according to Kevin Dent, chair of the IGDA Mobile SIG. Dent, who is also the CEO of Tiswaz Entertainment and an advisory board member at PlayHaven, said earlier this month that THQ had canceled its entire 2012 line-up. The company vehemently denied that rumor. Yesterday it was revealed that NASDAQ had threatened THQ with being delisted from the U.S.

At the same time Future was laying off employees at multiple publications within its ecosystem, IGN was telling long-time video game site VooDoo Extreme that they could no longer afford to pay them to update the site. They asked them to stay on as volunteers, according to one staffer.

Here's what "Jube" over at VooDoo Extreme said about the situation in a post called "Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes - The State Of Our Voodoo Extremities" :

Yesterday was a bad day for anyone that worked at Future US Publishing. The company laid off 19 employees as part of a restructuring plan from various divisions including Games Radar, Mac|Life, MaxPC, and Future Studios. The company will continue to publish Nintendo Power, PlayStation: The Official Magazine, OXM, and @Gamer.

Bethesda confirmed that Rage developer id Software has suffered an unspecified number of layoffs today.  That’s always a bummer and hopefully those affected are able to find gainful employment soon.

As far as we’re aware, this is the first major layoff id Software has seen.

According to a Computer & Video Games report, Nottingham, England-based studio Monumental Games went into administration (bankruptcy) last week and has eliminated all 25 of its full-time employees. 

The once promising in-game advertising agency IGA Worldwide continues to struggle, and has laid off nearly a third of its employees, according to a VentureBeat report.

Last week THQ confirmed that it had lowered its third-quarter projections, mostly based on poor sales of the HD versions of its uDraw tablet for Xbox 360 and PS3. On Friday the company delivered some retribution to 30 of its employees who worked on that project in some way. The company laid off 30 employees from its Play THQ development team, including unit leader Martin Good. That team worked out of THQ’s Agoura Hills, California offices.

Update: 1c Ukraine’s Sergey Galenkin confirms that GSC Game World has officially closed - as reported by Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

"GSC is closed, a fact confirmed by all. The team is almost completely dissolved, the state has only a few people," wrote Galenkin on his blog. 

Warner Bros. has confirmed that a number of jobs from its studios in the Seattle, Washington area have been eliminated. The confirmation comes after 3D Realms boss George Broussard tweeted about it earlier, saying that around 60 employees had been let go from the studio.

On Friday it was revealed that LEGO Universe, the LEGO block-themed massively multiplayer online building game, would be closing in January. Today we learn that 115 employees will lose their job in the aftermath of the game's shutdown.

California-based social game developer RockYou will lay off 100 employees. Around 40 employees will be going with Playdemic, the firm RockYou acquired in January of this year. The company will sell the studio back to its founders. Around 56 employees will be downsized from RockYou’s Redwood City headquarters, leaving around 90 employees at the company. The cuts and staff moves equate to a 50 percent overall reduction of staff.

German online browser and MMO game company Gameforge plans to let 100 of its 450 employees go.

"Through a more efficient organizational structure, we can optimize our use of resources and great potential for further growth increase," said Gameforge CEO and founder Alexander Roesner in a statement. "This will strengthen our long term position in the dynamic market for online games."

Ontario-based, Silicon Knights has laid off 45 employees, leaving around 40 employees left at the studio, according to multiple published reports. Earlier reports had the number a bit higher. The company is best known for developing such titles as Blood Omen, Too Human and Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes, and is one of Ontario’s oldest development studios. The layoffs are apparently related to the completion of a project for Activision Blizzard.

CCP CEO Hilmar Petursson said in a recent Gamasutra interview that it was his responsibility to prevent layoffs at the Eve Online studio - a task he obviously failed at this week when the company announced that it would cut 20 percent of its employees.

"This is a major thing, and it’s something which it is my responsibility to avoid," said Petursson in an interview with Gamasutra.

Another day, another story about game developer layoffs in Australia. This time it's at the 2K Marin studio in New South Wales. According to a Kotaku report, citing asource who wished to remain anonymous, 15 employees have been laid off from the studio formerly known as 2K Canberra. 2K Marin co-developed BioShock 2, and is reportedly involved in developing a new X-Com project.

EVE Online developer CCP announced today that it is reducing its staff by 20 percent, most of whom work out of its Atlanta, Georgia offices. A few layoffs will occur at its home offices as well. The company said in a press release today that developing three products at once has caused the company's output on its flagship product to suffer. The company is working on EVE Online expansions, Dust 514 and the new MMO World of Darkness.

Less than a year after it was founded, the Brisbane, Australian division of KMM that developed the video game adaption of Happy Feet 2 closed its doors on Friday, according to a Gamasutra report. According to Gamasutra, the company started laying off artists earlier this month. That was only the beginning of the end, as the company let go the remainder of its 40 employee strong workforce.

GameIndustry.biz reports that Electronic Arts is proposing that its studio in Guildford, England  be shut down. EA tells the publication that employees of its Bright Light studio have entered a "formal consultation process." Bright Light is best known for developing the most recent Harry Potter games. Other games not related to the popular Potter franchise were also in development at the studio, according to reports.

According to reports in Develop and MCV mobile giant Nokia will slash 3,500 manufacturing jobs as part of a series of cost-cutting measures. The Finnish mobile phone company announced that it plans to cut around 1,300 jobs from its location and commerce division, and close its Cluj factory in Romania, at the cost of another 2,200 staff.

Nokia is making good on its promise it made in February to cut thousands of jobs from its global business, in a bid to save as much as €1 billion.

TechCrunch is reporting that social games portal hi5 has "significantly reduced" its staff. hi5 president and CTO, Alex St. John, told the site that the rumors are somewhat true because the company had migrated the social games portal to the Windows Server OS as part of a strategy to launch a "next generation social gaming platform" early next year. The new site will use the Microsoft .Net framework.

According to the International Game Developers Association's (IGDA) Melbourne, Australia chapter, Electronic Arts is set to close the local division of Visceral Games. EA's Visceral Melbourne studio is best known for its work on Dante's Inferno. EA Visceral Melbourne staff will meet with human resources personnel on September 19, to discuss the studio's closure.

"More sad news emerging about #EAVisceral Melbourne studio closure," the IGDA chapter posted on its Twitter account. "Happy to help all affected in any way we can."

The developers behind Bodycount are being shut down by parent company Codemasters, or at least that is what it is "proposing." Confirming the news with Computer & Videogames, a company representative said that, while it is "proposing" shutting down the Guildford, England development facility, it will be expanding its "on-campus studios in Warwickshire (DiRT, GRID, F1 Online, Central Technology/EGO)."

At the Citi 2011 Tech Conference in New York City on Thursday morning, THQ's EVP and CFO Paul Pucino showed off video of Saints Row: The Third and a Jimmy Buffett Margaritaville Facebook game, of all things. But when the audience got a chance to ask the EVP questions, things got tough for the EVP. Much of the questioning had to do with THQ's failure and its painful restructuring program this year that saw multiple studios shuttered and its employees relocated or laid off.

Disney announced earlier this year that, as part of a restructuring plan, it would close several studios - including Black Rock. Today that closure has finally happened, according to a tweet from former studio director Nick Baynes.

"@blackrockster officially closes its doors today," he wrote via Twitter. "Thoughts go out to all facing their last day. A bright future awaits all though I'm sure!"

2K Czech has laid off more than 40 staff, according to a Develop report. The layoffs occurred at two studios operating under the 2K Czech brand. One group, based in Brno, has lost up to 40 developers, sources inside the company have told Develop. The other studio in Prague has laid off around 10 employees, according to insiders. Both studios employ around 200.

2K Games tells Develop that the layoffs do not mean that the company is changing the focus of the 2K Czech studio.

While we've often reported favorably on the tax incentives and other perks being handed out to developers to lure them to Canada, there is a consequence to companies overseas in countries such as the United Kingdom. Those consequences are being felt by employees of Games outsource firm Babel Media, who are in the midst of moving their operations from Brighton to Montreal. Those employees that want to stay with the company will either have to relocate or face a layoff, according to a GameIndustry.biz report.

According to a Joystiq report citing an unnamed source within the company, Bedlam Games has effectively been shut down, with "around 90 percent of Bedlam employees are officially on temporary layoffs." Further, the source claims that laid off employees have not received any severance pay and that a good amount of them have already found jobs at other companies.