Embracer's Digic laid off around 35 members of staff

Swedish games giant Embracer Group has let go more than 900 people as part of its restructuring effort.

505 Games parent company Digital Bros have announced - you guessed it - a round of mass layoffs. Following in the wake of Microsoft, Epic, CD Projekt, Sony and, well, take your pick, the company aim to cut roughly 30% of their workforce to shore up profits. The specific reasoning here is that Digital Bros think that people aren't interested in playing original new games; they'd rather get to grips with fictions and franchises they know and love already. As such, the company plan to "limit" their big budget projects in future, though no specific cancellations have been announced.

Digital Bros Group, perhaps best-known in the video game industry as the owner of publisher 505 Games, which is behind the likes of Control: Ultimate Edition and Death Stranding PC, is laying off a whopping 30% of its global workforce and doubling down on sequels because that seems to be what the industry wants. 

Technology and e-commerce giant Amazon has laid off 180 workers from its video game division.

Strauss Zelnick, boss of GTA publisher Take-Two, has credited the company's «three-part strategy» as the reason it has managed to avoid mass layoffs this year.

After reports circulated by Bloomberg last night, Rockstar Games has officially announced it will be finally showing the first trailer of the next Grand Theft Auto to fans next month. 

Ubisoft has laid off more than 100 staff, continuing what feels like an unending wave of layoffs across the video games industry. The latest job losses spanning visual effects and IT departments come less than six months after the Assassin’s Creed and Rainbow Six publisher made dozens of custom service staff redundant.

Resurrected TimeSplitters developers Free Radical Design could be the next Embracer-owned studio to be shuttered, according to recent reports. The rumoured closure comes just two years after the veteran British label were resurrected by their original founders to work on a new TimeSplitters game.

Former employees of Keywords Studios who unionized under the banner of Keywords Edmonton United are planning to strike outside of BioWare's Edmonton headquarters on November 7, beginning around 11AM to 12PM local time. The striking union members—who had previously been working on Dragon Age: Dreadwolf before BioWare ended its contract with their employer—are protesting what they describe as an unfair termination by Keywords that they say was motivated by their unionization efforts.

Laid-off Dragon Age: Dreadwolf and Mass Effect developers are attempting to turn this year's "N7 Day" of Mass Effect-themed festivities into a day of mass revolt. The developers in question are a mixture of former full-time staff and former Keywords Studios QA testers who have worked on Dreadwolf under contract. They've organised pickets outside BioWare Edmonton's offices in Canada, and are calling on BioWare fans to get involved on social media, while trying to engage current BioWare staff in conversation about unionisation.

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Cryptic Studios, the developer of the Star Trek Online and Neverwinter MMOs, has become the latest studio to lay off employees. The studio has confirmed that «difficult personnel changes» have made as a result of parent company Embracer Group's ongoing restructuring.