Team17, the UK-based developer of Worms and publishing label for the likes of Overcooked, Dredge, and Blasphemous, is the latest games company to be cutting jobs.
13.09.2023 - 20:45 / theverge.com
By Monica Chin, a senior reviewer covering laptops and other gadgets. Monica was a writer for Tom's Guide and Business Insider before joining The Verge in 2020.
Faze Clan, a merchandising and influencer marketing agency that was once synonymous with the esports space, has fired CEO Lee Trink. CFO Christoph Pachler will take over for Trink on an interim basis, Bloomberg reports.
Faze Clan cultivated a lavish and freewheeling image during its early years. The firm maintained teams across many different esports titles, created gaming-adjacent content for social media platforms like Twitch and Snapchat, and sold branded apparel. Trink, who had no esports background when he became Faze’s CEO in 2018, aimed to position it as a youth-oriented culture and lifestyle company. “We are the voice of this current gaming generation,” he said on an episode of The Vergecast in 2019, during which he also compared his company to the rise of hip-hop. The firm was valued at close to $1 billion near the end of 2021.
But Faze Clan has faced large losses under Trink’s leadership, including a reported $48.7 million from operations last year, per Bloomberg. Shares have plummeted to 18 cents from over $20. By the end of 2021 (the year when Trink began floating the idea, internally, of taking the company public), Faze Clan had more than $70 million in debt. Most of its teams have been reported to be unprofitable, and in 2023 alone, it has announced two rounds of layoffs.
Seven former employees who spoke to Bloomberg described “a mismanaged organization marked by poor spending decisions, excessive pay and expansion into unprofitable categories like esports.” Notably, the company rented a series of luxury properties that incurred costs as high as $60,000 per month. Trink “took FaZe’s influencers to fancy Los Angeles steakhouses and wore a diamond-encrusted necklace featuring FaZe’s “F” logo,” the employees said.
Faze Clan’s employees have also been embroiled in a number of other controversies in recent years. Most notably, the company drew criticism over its contract work with English YouTuber Sam Pepper, who has faced multiple accusations of sexual harassment. Incidents involving Pepper have made it more difficult for the company to attract sponsors, a source “with knowledge of the company’s sales” told Bloomberg.
Esports, a sector that traditionally relies on sponsorships for its revenue, has seen significant declines in the past few years as advertising budgets tighten. Multiple companies across the industry have made cuts. Earlier this summer, Activision Blizzard laid off around 50 employees in its esports department. “I can only speculate that Activision Blizzard is closing its esports division,” one terminated employee told
Team17, the UK-based developer of Worms and publishing label for the likes of Overcooked, Dredge, and Blasphemous, is the latest games company to be cutting jobs.
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Team 17, the British publisher behind some of the finest indie games of recent years, has parted ways with its CEO Michael Pattison, entering into a «period of consultation».
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A veteran game designer has gone and released a full-on top-down dungeon crawling, open world, old school Ultima-style RPG with a boatload of modern conveniences for the low, low price of absolutely free. Moonring is a really simple to get into retro-RPG with some neat systems and a fun world to explore where five moons represent the five gods, each of whom chooses and guides humans—except for those like you, the dreamless, who must choose their own destiny.
Fountain, a provider of hiring automation software for frontline workforces, considers India as one of the "big hubs" in this space, a top company official said. The company is present in the US, UK, France, Germany as well as in South Africa, India, New Zealand and a few other countries. "The big hubs are India, UK and France," Founder and CEO of the company Sean Behr told PTI. "Fountain focuses exclusively on the blue collar and gray collar workforce. A vast majority of people ... don't ...do PowerPoint or Excel, they do things on the frontlines of our economy," Behr said, adding that hiring and retaining workers in the blue and grey collar economy has never been more difficult.
Ubisoft came out of nowhere to 'rescue' Microsoft from its litigation with UK regulator CMA (Competition and Markets Authority). As you'll undoubtedly recall, the CMA was the only regulator to successfully block Microsoft's groundbreaking acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Microsoft appealed to the CAT (Competition Appeal Tribunal), but it would have been a long and arduous road to pursue, as CAT could only recommend another outcome to the CMA without being able to enforce it.
Streaming has played a big role in how we consume entertainment media for a good while now. With services like Netflix and Spotify, consumers can easily take in content with a button press. However, we’re not yet seeing this big move for video games. We might be a ways off from a seamless experience like how Netflix provides films and television series. However, Ubisoft’s CEO, Yves Guillemot, is finding that streaming will become far more mainstream sooner than you might have expected.
It’s been a very unique time in Hollywood lately, as the last several months have been highlighted not only by certain movies doing incredibly at the box office but also by the dual strikes that have been filling the streets of Los Angeles, protesting the work conditions of those within the entertainment industry. It started back in May when the Writers Guild went on strike and demanded both better pay and knowledge that AI wouldn’t be used to replace them, amongst other things. Then, SAG-AFTRA, the Screen Actors Guild, also joined the fight because the vast amount of their workers weren’t being paid fairly either.
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A number of major investment firms are set to attend the GamesIndustry.biz Investment Summit London on Thursday, October 12th.