Though The Beatles: Rock Band has moved over 1 million units to date, Harmonix still had to lay off 39 employees today in a move to restructure staff for the studio's upcoming development schedule (via Joystiq). A rep for MTV Games and Harmonix later confirmed the number of employees affected by the layoffs with Gamasutra, adding that the cuts have nothing to do with sales performance of The Beatles: Rock Band.

"This was a process and business decision unrelated to the performance of any MTV Games/Harmonix product," the rep clarified. "Those 39 affected (which roughly represented about 13 percent of the staff) were primarily from the QA dept." According to the rep, future Harmonix projects will not be affected by the layoffs.



Tyler says: I don't want to make light of this situation, but as most people know, big titles like The Beatles: Rock Band usually see some level of staff cut post-launch. But hey, at least all these folks have one of the highest-profile games of 2009 under their belts. I can see the job interviews now: "I worked on Beatles Rock Band." "You're hired!" I imagine that's going to happen a lot. Best of luck to those affected by cutbacks.