Word from both GameBanshee and Polygon (both of whom, it seems, are citing a GameIndustry report) is that Richard Garriott’s Portalarium — the Austin-based development house that produced Ultimate Collector: Garage Sale, and which is currently working on New Britannia/the Ultimate RPG — has layed off a number of its staff:

News of the redundancies broke on Twitter on Friday, when senior programmer Paul Evans said, “Today [Portalarium] had to lay off people and I was one of them.”

Evans, who was a programmer at Lionhead before making the move to Portalarium in July 2011, also noted that the redundancies were a “surprise” to the employees involved, and that Portalarium’s management, “could’ve been better prepared with more notice.”

That’s unfortunate to hear, although I find myself rather more disturbed by this additional bit of clarification issued by Portalarium proper:

“We are reducing staff to the appropriate levels to support and grow our recently launched products, as well as continue development of Richard Garriott’s Ultimate RPG,” a representative from the Austin-based studio told GamesIndustry International.

Once burned, twice shy, as they say. A similar explanation was offered when a large round of layoffs hit BioWare Austin, and it later turned out to be the case that the game was…well, if not actually in trouble then at least seen as being in such. That series of events ultimately ended with the game transitioning to a hybrid subscription/free-to-play model, of course…and I find myself led to suspect that “reducing staff to appropriate levels to support” X, Y, and Z titles is the new “nothing to see here” in the world of corporate male bovine excrement. Surprise layoffs aren’t typically a good sign (see: 38 Studios) either.

Is Portalarium in trouble? You wouldn’t necessarily think so, given that they recently secured a good $7 million in venture capital, and also entered into a partnership with Zynga. Zynga hasn’t been doing very well financially of late; could it be that they’ve scaled back their support for Portalarium’s development efforts?

According to GameBanshee, at least, development of the Ultimate RPG hasn’t been affected by this, which is something. Still, if the company is falling on fiscal difficulties, does the possibility exist that we’ll see Garriott turn to crowdfunding to raise any additional needed capital? Is an Ultimate RPG Kickstarter on — or just over — the horizon?

Or am I making mountains out of molehills?