Layoffs News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Take-Two hasn't shut down Roll7 and Intercept Games, CEO Strauss Zelnick said in an interview.

Palia developer Singularity 6 has laid off 36 employees.

Dauntless and Fae Farm studio Phoenix Labs is undergoing significant restructuring resulting in layoffs and project cancellations.

Singularity 6 has gone through another round of redundancies, laying off 36 people.

Fae Farm developer Phoenix Labs has laid off "many" of its employees and reportedly canceled projects that were in development.

Square Enix is reportedly preparing to lay off an unconfirmed number of workers as part of restructuring efforts.

Australia-based developer Mighty Kingdom has laid off 28% of its workforce, affecting at least 14 people.

Xbox president Sarah Bond says that Microsoft's shuttering of four Bethesda studios is to ensure the firm's business is "healthy for the long term."

This Week in Business is our weekly recap column, a collection of stats and quotes from recent stories presented with a dash of opinion (sometimes more than a dash) and intended to shed light on various trends. Check every Friday for a new entry.

CI Games is implementing one last round of layoffs as part of the restructuring it began in January.

Lightforge Games has announced it's cutting the "majority" of its staff by the end of the month, and is pausing development on its upcoming title Project ORCS.

Former Microsoft senior PR lead Brad Hilderbrand has blogged about the recent closure of Tango Gameworks and Arkane Austin, making a familiar case that Microsoft’s gaming division are now expected “to cut expenses to the bone” in the wake of the wildly expensive acquisition of Activision Blizzard and amid slowing growth of the Game Pass subscription business. In Hilderbrand’s view, Game Pass will likely never be sustainable or profitable. Microsoft’s only chance on this front, he says, is “to put all the world's biggest games on the service” – namely, Call of Duty, which still earns hundreds of millions annually in direct sales, or GTA 6, which, hahahaha.

Finding a job can be stressful and daunting. Given the wave of layoffs in the games industry, including those from Microsoft this week, it's a tall task. It can also be time-consuming and difficult during this economic downturn.

A ZeniMax executive has reportedly said Xbox's closure of four studios this week was due to a lack of staff and support.

Microsoft is shutting down four of the studios it picked up as part of the 2020 Bethesda acquisition, as reported by IGN.

In the midst of its “cost reduction program,” Take-Two Interactive appears to plan to shutter two of its subsidiary studios, Intercept and Roll7. This is also in the midst of a wider layoff of about 5% of its staff, approximately 600 staffers according to some estimates, and some shut-downs of internal projects.

Long-running Netherlands-based game developer Paladin Studios has closed its doors.

Mobile and indie game developer Paladin Studios has ceased its operations.

More details have emerged about the ongoing layoffs at Take-Two Interactive, with reports suggesting the publisher has shut down two indie-size studios.

Take-Two is reportedly planning to shut down Private Division studios Roll7 and Intercept Games as part of recently announced restructuring.

The future of Kerbal Space Program 2 studio Intercept Games appears uncertain amid ongoing restructuring at owner Take-Two Interactive.

Mobile game maker Belka Games has laid off 33 staffers.

Take-Two appears to be preparing to close its Seattle office this summer, likely as part of the recently announced layoffs across the company.

Yesterday, coinciding with the release of the Thrones of Decay DLC, Total War: Warhammer 3 jumped 90 places in the Steam charts, trailed closely by the three lord packs that make up the strategy game's latest expansion. Those lord packs are now the three top rated expansions in the series’ history, and the base game itself saw a huge uptick in positive reviews. The last day also saw a peak player count of around 66,000, putting it ahead of giants like Palworld, Rimworld, and Fallout 76. None of this would be especially notable, however, if this wasn’t a complete turnaround from how things have been for the best part of a year now.

The founders of Deliver Us Mars and Deliver Us the Moon studio KeokeN have announced that the rest of the company has been laid off.

The developers of sci-fi action-adventure Deliver Us Mars have laid off all their staff. The news was announced by KeokeN Interactive's leadership in a statement in which they state they have "exhausted all our possible options" of finding funding for a new project. They also say they plan to rebuild the company.

Deliver Us Mars developer Keoken Interactive has laid off the majority of its staff after struggling to secure funding or future work during GDC 2024.

Gloomhaven developer Flaming Fowl Studios has announced layoffs, and that it's putting its current project on hold.

An independent UK developer says it’s been forced to announce and postpone its game on the same day, and lay off more than half of its staff, due to the sharp downturn in investment in the games industry.

Famed mass-layoff-manufacturing corporation Embracer Group are dividing into three companies, which will be listed separately on Sweden’s stock exchange. Those companies are: Asmodee Group, which comprises Embracer’s tabletop games biz; Coffee Stain & Friends, an evolution of the existing Coffee Stain publisher, who will pursue "a dual focus on indie and A/AA premium and free-to-play games for PC/console and mobile"; and Middle-earth Enterprises & Friends, “a creative powerhouse in AAA game development and publishing for PC and console, as well as the stewards of The Lord of the Rings and Tomb Raider intellectual properties, among many others”.

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Take-Two Interactive is embarking on another cost cutting program, and this one will see the company layoff about 5% of its employees by the end of the year.

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At the Game Developer Conference last month, Glow Up Games co-founder and CXO Latoya Peterson contributed to a series of micro-talks around sustainability, calling out the fundamental flaws of games funding.

The International Game Developers Association (IGDA) has called for the games industry to do more to protect developer jobs and prevent further layoffs.

Possibility Space has shut down, according to former employees.

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The International Game Developers Association today released a "call to action" for studio leaders to avoid unneeded layoffs.

Immortals of Aveum developer Ascendant Studios has reportedly furloughed the majority of its staff.

The $70 release day price for standard AAA titles is both unsustainable and on the way out, claims Saber Interactive CEO Matthew Karch, via an interview with IGN reporter Rebekah Valentine.

GAME staff have reportedly been told to expect a wave of redundancies as employees are moved to zero hours contracts.

UK retailer Game is reportedly cutting an unspecified number of jobs.

Singularity 6 has laid off a third of its staff following Palia's release on Steam.

Relic Entertainment, the freshly-independent developers of Company of Heroes, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War and Age of Empires IV, have confirmed a number of job losses. The layoffs come just a week after the studio announced their sale from former owners Sega, returning them to independence after two decades.

Former Prytania Media CEO Annie Delisi Strain has issued a statement regarding the closure of Crop Circle Games last month.

Relic Entertainment has announced redundancies following its sale from Sega last week.

Company of Heroes developer Relic Entertainment has said it will make further layoffs, following its sale by Sega announced last week.

A week after being sold by Sega and becoming an independent studio, Relic Entertainment has announced a round of layoffs.

Gearbox Entertainment has announced an unspecified number of redundancies following its sale from Embracer last week.

Ubisoft has announced another round of layoffs, with 45 staff affected across its global publishing and Asia-Pacific teams.

Certain Affinity has laid off 25 US-based employees working in its business operations division.

Ubisoft has confirmed plans to lay off a further 45 employees as part of an ongoing exercise to “streamline operations”.

Earlier today, megacorp Embracer announced they were selling Borderlands developer Gearbox to Take-Two. During an investor call about the divestment, CEO Lars Wingefors confirmed that this brought an end to the restructuring process Embracer announced last year. He was also asked whether this meant Embracer had plans to start acquiring other studios again.

Certain Affinity has laid off 25 of its staff, in what its CEO says is the first mass layoff in the studio’s 17-year history.

Sega Of America employees have become the first a major US video games studio to ratify a union contract. The contract covers guarantees minimum yearly pay increases for around 150 staff through 2026.

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Sega has announced plans to sell Relic Entertainment and cut 240 jobs in Europe.

Sega has sold Relic Entertainment, and will cut 240 roles across Sega Europe, Creative Assembly and Sega HARDlight

Nintendo of America is reorganizing its QA team, as Kotaku reports the company is conducting a "massive" downsizing of the contractor base at its Redmond, Washington headquarters.

Nintendo of America is reportedly cutting around 120 contractor jobs as part of a restructuring of its testing department ahead of Switch 2’s launch.

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GameStop has reportedly made another round of layoffs, with an unspecified number of jobs lost following lower fourth quarter revenue and low consumer spending.

Microsoft’s head of gaming has said the company’s decision to cut 1,900 jobs was ultimately the result of a lack of growth in the industry.

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Velan Studios has announced that it is in the early stages of reorganisation, and has confirmed that layoffs will most likely occur as a result.

The director of Baldur's Gate 3, Swen Vincke, was one of many to speak out on the recent mass layoffs within the video games industry at an industry awards show last night, blaming the job losses on corporate «greed» that had been «fucking this whole thing up for so long».

Media Molecule has set a date for the last of its staff affected by layoffs announced last October to leave the studio.

Sensor Tower has acquired mobile marketing firm Data.ai for an undisclosed sum, which will involve an unknown number of layoffs from the latter's workforce.

Originally announced back at Gamescom 2022, dark historical fantasy RPG Wyrdsong’s developer, Something Wicked Games, seems to be the most recent studio to suffer mass layoffs.

Something Wicked Games has reportedly cut an unknown number of staff.

Apex Legends developer Respawn Entertainment has suffered a round of layoffs as part of wider cuts at parent company Electronic Arts.

Deviation Games has closed down.

New AAA game developer Deviation Games is closing, the studio announced.

Unforetold: Witchstone entered Early Access in January, and developer Spearhead Games is now ending production “indefinitely” this week on the CRPG after “difficult” financial circumstances that also see the studio laying off most of its staff.

Warner Bros. Discovery is shutting down its Rooster Teeth division, according to a Variety report.

Australian studio Torus has laid off its team and will be on a hiatus for the foreseeable future.