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2023 has been a turbulent year for Embracer Group, with a number of its many studios and projects having been affected by widespread layoffs and an internal restructuring initiative. Now, another studio under the company’s umbrella has been hit with significant layoffs.

After reports from earlier this month that developer Free Radical Design—which had been working on a revival of classic sci-fi shooter TimeSplitters—was on the verge of being shut down, Embracer CEO Lars Wingefors has seemingly confirmed internally that the studio will be closed before Christmas.

Embracer Group CEO Lars Wingefors has reportedly confirmed to employees that TimeSplitters studio Free Radical is facing closure next month, as part of a sweeping restructuring programme that has already resulted in more than 900 job cuts at the company.

Fishlabs is the latest developer to see layoffs as part of the ongoing cuts at parent company Embracer, Eurogamer understands

Chinese TikTok parent ByteDance is restructuring its video games business and reportedly stopping work on all unreleased games.

The official Marvel Snap Twitter account claims that the popular collectible card game will “continue to operate and flourish in the future” despite the reports that its publisher, Nuverse, is facing “structural changes.”

Writer Megan McDonnell, who has worked on Marvel projects WandaVision and The Marvels, has joined the team working on Amazon's Tomb Raider TV series.

Even in a year where the news cycle has been as dominated by layoffs in the games industry as 2023 has been, the scale at which Embracer Group has made cutbacks where its staff is concerned has taken many by surprise. The company instituted a restructuring plan earlier in the year after it failed to close a $2 billion deal with Saudi Arabia’s Savvy Games Group, recently confirming that that had led to about 900 Embracer employees being laid off.

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Embracer Group, the Swedish video game and media holding corporation responsible for a wide range of intellectual properties and game studios, has announced that it's laid off a total of 900 employees over the past three months.

Embracer Group CEO Lars Wingefors has chosen not to deny reports that Timesplitters studio Free Radical Design faces closure.

Swedish mega-publisher Embracer Group has laid off more than 900 people as it looks to mitigate its massive $1.3 billion in debt. With these cuts — and more to come — Embracer expects to lower that number to below $1 million by the fiscal year’s end. The company, which is known for its rapid expansion and industry consolidation, has 15,701 employees as of late September, according to its latest financial report.

Embracer has revealed that they are writing down 15 of the video games they are working on.

Embracer Group provided further details about its ongoing restructuring plan during its quarterly earnings presentation on Thursday.

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Embracer co-founder and CEO Lars Wingefors has confirmed 900 employees were laid off in the past financial quarter, representing five percent of the workforce.

Embracer has revealed that they have laid off a total of 900 employees in the second quarter of this financial year.

Embracer Group has said it has laid off 904 staff, or 5% of its workforce, since its financial struggles began following the collapse of a $2 billion deal, reportedly with Saudi government funded company Savvy Games Group.

It’s been a brutal year for the games industry with widespread layoffs having hit a number of developers and publishers over the last several months, and Embracer Group has been one of several companies that have been impacted. After failing to close a deal with Saudia Arabia’s Savvy Games Group worth $2 billion, the company started a restructuring program earlier in 2023, and that has resulted in a significant reduction in its total workforce.

Embracer Group’s ongoing restructuring resulted in 900 employees being let go during its second quarter ended in September.

505 Games’ parent company Digital Bros has said that it expects to cut approximately 30% of its workforce.

Lara Croft is coming to Magic: The Gathering as part of an upcoming Secret Lair x Tomb Raider collaboration.

Amazon has announced plans to lay off another 180 employees from its video games division.

Warframe studio Digital Extremes has confirmed a round of job cuts tied to the closure of its external projects division.

Warframe developer Digital Extremes has confirmed a «number of» layoffs at the studio resulting from the closure of its publishing division. It's also announced it'll no longer be publishing free-to-play online action-RPG Wayfinder following the closure, and that full control of the property will return to developer Airship Syndicate.

It was announced back in 2021 that TimeSplitters developer Free Radical Design had been re-established and that a revival of the sci-fi first person shooter IP had entered development, but it seems the project might be short-lived.

2023 is being touted as one of the greatest years in gaming. With major releases like Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Spider-Man 2, and Starfield coming from the big three publishers, plus plenty of third-party hits, there are more great games this year than we know what to do with. Meanwhile, there have been close to over 6,000 layoffs across the games industry in the same time, impacting companies like Bungie, Epic Games, and more. But the primary reason for the huge number of redundancies isn’t because of something that happened in the last 12 months, but a trend that’s steadily grown for the past two years.

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.

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Time Splitters studio Free Radical is reportedly the latest developer to be affected by Embracer Group's sweeping restructuring programme, with the studio said to be facing closure.

Ubisoft is the latest big player in the games industry to announce a round of job cuts.

Former Embracer Group chief operating officer Egil Strunke announced on LinkedIn today that he has formally resigned as the company's chief operating officer—essentially, Embracer's number-two guy—and that he's now launching an all-new game company of his own.

Cryptic Studios, the makers of MMOs including Star Trek Online and Dungeons & Dragons MMORPG Neverwinter, have confirmed a number of layoffs due to the ongoing “comprehensive restructuring” of megacorp owner Embracer Group. The “personnel changes” at Cryptic make them the latest Embracer-owned developer to suffer job losses in what continues to be an unrelenting year for thousands of those working in video games.

Egil Strunke has confirmed that he’s left Embracer Group as chief operating officer, announcing that he’s ready to “embark on a new mission” after he “reached a checkpoint”. 

Embracer's chief operating officer has left the company, amid a wave of restructuring and studio closures.

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Embracer Group’s chief operating officer has confirmed his departure from the company.

Embracer Group has made layoffs at Neverwinter developer Cryptic Studios. Several current and former Cryptic employees confirmed there has been a "reduction in force" at the studio, although it's unclear how many people have been let go.

Destiny 2 developer Bungie has discussed its “path forward” for its popular FPS following the announcement of redundancies at the company earlier this week. 

Cryptic Studios appears to be the latest Embracer-owned company to be impacted by layoffs.

After a surge of investment between 2020 and 2022, money funnelled into the video game industry from private equity sources has now dropped dramatically, back to and even below previous pre-Covid levels.

2023 has seen a worrying amount of developers and publishers in the games industry being hit with layoffs, and Bungie now seems to have joined that ever-increasing list. In a report published by Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, it’s been stated that the company – which was acquired by Sony last year in a deal worth $3.6 billion – has let go an undisclosed number of its employees.

In what’s already been a crazy 2023, it appears another big studio has undergone layoffs. An email sent to Bungie employees from Bungie CEO Pete Parsons indicated staff would be “hearing some news today” and that a team meeting scheduled for later would “discuss today’s events”. Jason Schreier at Bloomberg saw and reported the circulating email.

Destiny maker Bungie is the latest Sony Interactive Entertainment studio to be hit with layoffs.

Hungary-based animation studio Digic has laid off 35 members of staff.

Dreams and LittleBigPlanet developer Media Molecule is to lay off 15-20% of its staff, according to a new report.

PlayStation's Visual Arts is the latest gaming company to have been hit by layoffs.

EA Motive has shared an exciting new message about their upcoming Iron Man video game.

Zen Studios, the team behind the Pinball FX series, is reportedly one of the latest companies to have been hit by layoffs this year.

Zen Studios has become the latest studio owned by Embracer Group to be hit with layoffs.

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Spotted by Twitter user Timur222 and reported by Game World Observer it appears that the latest to be affected by layoffs within Embracer Group and the video game industry in general are Cryptic Studios and Zen Studios.

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Cambridge, UK-based Frontier Developments is the latest major game developer to announce layoffs and spending cuts.

Frontier, the developer behind the likes of F1 Manager, Planet Zoo, and other management games, has announced layoffs as part of an organisational review of the business.

Over 6,100 gaming jobs have been lost so far over the past year due to layoffs and studio closures, according to new data.

Venture capital funding in video games fell to its lowest in three years last quarter.

It looks like Telltale Games is the latest studio hit by the wave of layoffs rolling through the games industry. Following a report of layoffs, Telltale has confirmed to Destructoid that it recently let go off members of the team.

Telltale Games has certainly been through the wringer in recent years, having been gutted and shuttered in 2018, before being reformed the following year thanks to the purchase of its remaining assets. In its renewed form, however, it seems the studio is once again going through a tough period.

Telltale Games allegedly laid off several staff members at the beginning of September, according to former cinematic artist Jonah Huang. Huang said on X that the developer laid off “most of us” and specified that he couldn’t speak about the status of The Wolf Among Us 2, the project on which he was working, due to a non-disclosure agreement.

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Twitch has seen another round of layoffs, though full details are unknown.

In the latest in a string of whirlwind layoffs in the games-and-games-adjacent industry, it appears there has been another round of layoffs at Twitch, according to Today Off Stream’s Zach Bussey via Twitter. 

New York-based developer Dang is shutting down.

Pistol Shrimp was established by a group of veteran Toys For Bob developers who had learned the importance of owning what they make through first-hand experience.

The Last of Us developer Naughty Dog is reportedly cutting contracts short for dozens of workers.

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.

Team17, the publisher of works such as Blasphemous 2, Gord, and Moving Out 2 has entered “a period of consultation,” meaning the company will seek to identify potential redundancies in the organization.

Earth’s Mightiest Heroes have officially retired with Marvel’s Avengers having been delisted from all digital storefronts. If you attempt to search for the game on PlayStation, Xbox, or PC and you’ll find no sign of the superhero action RPG.

Team17 is reportedly planning “significant” job losses as part of a company restructure.

Earth’s Mightiest Heroes have officially retired with Marvel’s Avengers having been delisted from all digital storefronts. If you attempt to search for the game on PlayStation, Xbox, or PC and you’ll find no sign of the superhero action RPG.

Marvel’s Avengers, the ill-fated live-service action-adventure title from Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal, is getting delisted today. Players can pick it up on digital storefronts before it’s gone, with the Definitive Edition currently discounted by 90 percent on Steam.

The Star Wars KOTOR Remake isn't in a good place. So far, we've only seen a short teaser trailer that doesn't really tell us anything about the game. Then, the project was taken away from its previous developer, Aspyr, reportedly over concerns about the game's slow development. Now, as yet another year passes with no KOTOR Remake updates - aside from the announcement trailer being taken down by Sony - many fear that the game has been shelved entirely.

As Epic Games announced a set of mass layoffs yesterday, Ubisoft quietly conducted some of its own. Six members in the community and social media teams were let go, a spokesperson confirmed to Polygon.

Epic Games will lay off around 830 employees, or 16% of jobs at the company. The Fortnite maker says it has no plans for further cuts and cites slimmer margins from its shared revenue as part of the decision.

Epic Games is reportedly laying off around 16% of its workforce.

Crystal Dynamics, the developer behind the rebooted Tomb Raider franchise, has been hit with a round of layoffs. This follows the ongoing crumbling of Embracer Group, which announced a large-scale restructuring of its assets in June, resulting in layoffs, closures and cancellations.

Netflix has announced the Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft animated series, based on the Tomb Raider video game series. It is produced by Legendary with Crystal Dynamics.

The first trailer for Netflix's Tomb Raider anime series has revealed that it will focus on Survivor-era Lara Croft and showcase her "iconic rise" once more.

Beamdog, the studio founded by former BioWare developers Trent Oster and Cameron Tofer, is best known for re-releases of CRPGs like Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 2, Planescape: Torment, Neverwinter Nights, and Icewind Dale. It was acquired by Embracer Group earlier this year, and its latest game, Mythforce (which is basically Vermintide if it looked like a He-Man cartoon) came out of early access this month. It's the kind of online co-op game that would benefit from robust post-launch support, which makes now a particulaly rough time for 26 members of the team to be laid off.