It seems that HQ of Ubisoft is also facing job cuts!

#Ubisoft@GameDEV
#LayOffs@GameDEV

Remember that fighting game you don't actually remember? It's not doing good...

The project has been in development for about a decade and has been released on PC and consoles last month after some kind of beta testing.

But something went wrong. Riot ignored Steam and never targeted the broad genre fans, hoping and League of Legends community will sort it out. It didn't.

#RiotGames@GameDEV
#LayOffs@GameDEV

The studio behind very nice The Demon Souls and Shadow of Collosus remakes is being shut down by PlayStation.

#PlayStation@GameDEV
#LayOffs@GameDEV

They were doing what? 😑

#LayOffs@GameDEV

NACON has no more money to operate its property and trying to settle it with investors.

They are the company behind Cyanide (Styx), Daedalic (Deponia, Gollum, State of Mind), Spiders (GreedFall, Steelrising). In total there are over 25 companies, 1000+ employees, and over 100 locations.

Not a full Bankruptcy, but they are fairly close to it. And they still plan a new presentation on March 6 and hoping to freeze their obligations by up to 18 months.

#LayOffs@GameDEV

The original founder of Twitter and AI-fanatic Jack is shrinking his current company from 10000+ to just 6000 workers.

He says that:

we're not making this decision because we're in trouble. our business is strong

According to internal documents, his team now despise him for pushing use of AI under "productivity" promise, but their overall opinion "we would use it already if it would be even remotely productive".

#AI@GameDEV
#LayOffs@GameDEV

Since Nacon has no budget to burn, they moved the planned presentation two months forward. And promise to fix the budgeting issue.

They are the company behind Spiders, Daedalic, and dozens of other studios around the world. They unified over the years to be more resilient but it kinda didn't work out.

#Business@GameDEV
#Finance@GameDEV
#Nacon@GameDEV

Battlefield 6 team did a good job upon release but it's not catching up with content and bug fixes yet again.

EA is laying off employees to lower the financial pressure from the whole Battlefield franchise.

#Battlefield@GameDEV
#EA@GameDEV
#LayOffs@GameDEV

Meme related

(By estimates, up to 20 million copies of Battlefield 6 could be already sold).

#LayOffs@GameDEV
#meme@GameDEV

Ballistic Moon is now officially closed. The studio behind the pointless Until Dawn Remaster has been an empty shell for a while now, but now it's completely gone.

The original game used to have a carefully placed fog and light flares. In the remaster they simply dropped the most basic 3D fog everywhere and called it a day (or a night, IDK)

#LayOffs@GameDEV
#PlayStation@GameDEV

WB Games Montreal, the studio behind Gotham Knights and cancelled Wonder Woman game is laying off undisclosed number of people.

They were also a supportive studio in Kill the Justice League.

#WB@GameDEV
#DC@GameDEV
#LayOffs@GameDEV

The studio behind Highguard disappeared from LinkedIn. Their websites went offline. The co-founder marked that his work in Wildlight Entertainment is over. Apparently, the company is now closed.

The studio already fired most of the team right after the release but the remaining 18 people have tried to recover what's left. Now only the debt remains as even PlayStation started to issue refunds for people who sent money to this game.

8-18 people are still online regardless, they are looking at connection error screen and staying.

#LayOffs@GameDEV

Back in 2022 Sony Acquired Oscar-Winning VP/VFX Company Pixomondo. Now it will be shut down.

The company is mostly known for VFX on TV and big screens, including The Boys and Game of Thrones, Fast and Furious, Netflix's Avatar, and dozens of other projects. Soon about 500 people will loose their jobs.

Most of the company used to be made of per-project contractors. They will complete their active projects in the next few months, but should not expect contract renewals. Some senior permanent staff will be transferred to Sony Pictures Imageworks VFX structure.

#LayOffs@GameDEV

Epic Games just got rid of 1000 workers due to significant loss of profits from Fortnite. The company was spending too much for the last few quarters and now they will have to adjust.

In total the company is trying to cut $500m with all the measures. I assume that free games on Epic Store will also be affected.

#Fortnite@GameDEV
#EpicGames@GameDEV
#LayOffs@GameDEV

And PlayStation is shutting down Dark Outlaw Games. The company they founded with ex-Treyarch veteran and co-creator of Call of Duty Zombies franchise Jason Blundell.

The craziest part? The company was established last March and lived just about a year. Do they know that to succeed in game industry you have to MAKE GAMES and not simply shut down every studio you have?

Jason is also a curious person: in 2022 he announced the creation of Deviation Games that was also focused on PlayStation exclusives. Then he left his own company in 2023, and then Deviation Games was eventually shut down in 2024. In total way over 100 people worked there, famous motion capture actors were there, and it was all gone without a trace.

#LayOffs@GameDEV
#PlayStation@GameDEV

And since it's no longer my sources but also public statements, here is the good example of what's wrong with "let's fire 1000 people" — it will be random.

Almost like Unity when they fired Ben from their shader graph team... literally the best specialist and evangelist of the whole engine.

#EpicGames@GameDEV
#LayOffs@GameDEV

Eidos Montreal lost it's current boss David Anfossi (who led the company since 2013) and 124 people from the team lost their jobs as well.

- I never asked for this!

The company was NOT working on the next Deus Ex, most of the people who led Deus Ex MKD and Human Revolution parted ways with the studio years ago. Some of them made Unknown 9: Awakening, some Hell is Us, and so on — not the most commercially impressive examples.

#LayOffs@GameDEV