THQ closing Arizona QA facility, moving jobs to Montreal

THQ continues to cut costs, as the publisher today confirmed a Game Informer report that it would be closing its Arizona quality assurance (QA) facility and moving those operations to Montreal. The move will impact 57 THQ employees, with an unspecified number of them being given the choice to relocate to Canada along with the QA operation.

"Montreal is a prime location for industry talent, has favorable economics, and is a big part of our future game development plans," THQ explained in a statement. "With those considerations in mind, we have made the business decision to consolidate our two quality assurance operations into one location at THQ Montreal…The decision to move QA operations was driven by industry, market and economic trends."

It's been a tumultuous year for THQ. In January, the publisher announced a restructuring to exit the children's licensed game market, and then laid off 118 workers to change its long-awaited massively multiplayer online role-playing game Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium Online to a standard RPG. More recently, the publisher laid off workers at its San Diego studio after losing the UFC license to Electronic Arts, saw abundant turnover in its executive ranks, divested itself of any interest in Tomonobu Itagaki's Devil's Third, and avoided delisting from the NASDAQ stock exchange with a 1-for-10 reverse stock split.