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San Francisco-based Crystal Dynamics again feels the lash of layoffs, as Eidos confirms with Kotaku that around twenty-five employees have been let go from the Tomb Raider development studio.

We first heard stirrings of these new layoffs earlier this week, receiving several tips from people purporting to be former employees or friends of former employees. Now an Eidos spokesperson has confirmed the layoffs, citing the need to "focus resources" as the underlying reason behind them.

"We can confirm that Crystal Dynamics has made a reduction of approximately 25 people at the San Francisco studio. This decision is a reflection of the continued drive to focus resources at the studio. We would like to thank all of the employees affected by this difficult decision for their hard work during their time at Crystal and we wish them all the best in the future."

This latest round of cuts follows rumors in January of another 30 or so employees cut loose from the developer following poor performance of the latest Tomb Raider title, Tomb Raider Underworld.

With no currently announced projects and the recent acquisition of parent company Eidos by Square Enix, one cannot help but worry about the future of the remaining Crystal Dynamics employees. Tomb Raider was a large part of the allure of Eidos to Square Enix, so we wouldn't be surprised if they took Lara out of Crystal Dynamics' hands in an attempt to revitalize the franchise once again.

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I just want to reassure you that Crystal remains the home of Lara and she’s not going anywhere.

We genuinely want to thank all of the employees affected by this situation and we wish them all the best in the future. Although it’s a sad day for the guys that have been let go, be assured the future of Crystal is very bright and there’s about 90 people that are beavering away on the next game.

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As I have said many times before, not linked to this directly, game developers don't have one set of people sat in one room working on one game for the duration of the development cycle.

The development cycle is split into many stages and there will be people who only work in certain stages. If that area is finished then it's unfortunately very common for those people to be let go if there's no more work to be done. Doesn't mean the game stops development, it's simply moved onto the next stage.

Yes there are people who will be attached to the game through the entire development cycle but that is usually the producers or back end staff (not always just them but as an example)

Think of car manufacturing. If you have production line of cars being made and the first stage is creating the chassis of the car, once the chassis is created what does the chassis-maker do if there's need to make another chassis? Get paid to sit around not doing much? Of course not. Sad but true.

Hope that kind of goes a little way to explain to people about how game development kind of works. Its a very strange process to say the least.