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Embracer studio Lost Boys Interactive hit by sweeping layoffs
16.01.2024 - 09:07 / thesixthaxis.com / Interactive
Lost Boys Interactive has laid off a “sizable” portion of its team, it’s been confirmed, with the Gearbox-owned studio the latest to be hit by the wide reaching restructuring programme that Embracer Group is enacting across its array of businesses.
Having employed over 400 people, it’s not currently clear how many are being let the studio shared a statement with Eurogamer:
“Lost Boys Interactive made the difficult decision to restructure our studio to ensure we can succeed in spite of headwinds facing the industry right now. Unfortunately, this does mean we will separate from some of our team members and we’re working closely with those affected. We know this is a hard time for this talented and experienced group of people and will provide support and assistance through this transition to those leaving.”
Former Lost Boys producer Jared Pace shared on LinkedIn last week that “It seems a sizable portion of Lost Boys Interactive was laid off today, including myself.” Speaking to Aftermath, he added that these layoffs “affected all disciplines at all levels”.
Lost Boys Interactive was founded in 2017 as a support studio to take on external work for other games, including PUBG, Diablo 4, Call of Duty, Borderlands 3 and Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands. The latter two games led to it being acquired by Embracer subsidiary Gearbox in 2022. At that point it was at 220 staff, but has massively scaled up in size to over 400 employees since then, leaning on a ‘remote-first’ model to hire from across the United States of America and Canada.
The company is the latest victim by the boom and bust business strategy that Embracer Group has taken in the last few years, of rapidly expanding through acquisitions and massive hiring sprees across numerous subsidiaries and division, only for the economic situation to change and then having to massively scale back its operations after failing to secure $2 billion in investment, reportedly from the Saudi PIF’s Savvy Gaming Group.
It’s not clear what this means for Gearbox as a whole, which has reportedly been up for sale since last year. Through acquisitions and hiring, Gearbox is a very different company compared to when it was bought up by Embracer in 2021, and it could be that Embracer is making cuts to try and make it a more attractive purchase, or they could now be pivoting to retain Gearbox and making cuts to further that.
Source: Eurogamer
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