CI Games, the publisher behind last year’s Lords of the Fallen and the Sniper Ghost Warrior franchise, has laid off 10 percent of its staff, as first reported by GamesIndustry.biz. The publication says its sources pointed to laid-off staff posting about the job cuts on LinkedIn, but has since received confirmation from CI Games.
It’s currently unclear how many people 10 percent of the company translates, too, considering CI Games is a publisher that also owns studios like Lords of the Fallen developer Hexworks and Sniper Ghost Warrior developer Underdog Studio.
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CI Games CEO Marek Tymiński told GamesIndustry.biz the following:
“To preserve business strength and stability, CI Games has made the tough but necessary decision to implement a targeted round of redundancies, affecting approximately 10 percent of employees across the company,” Tymiński told GamesIndustry.biz. “We would like to thank each of them for the part they’ve played during their time with us.”
Unsettlingly, Tymiński seems to indicate more layoffs are on the horizon, possibly referring to job cuts as “optimization.” Tymiński told GamesIndustry.biz, “Further business optimizations are being made to the organization’s pipelines and processes.”
These job cuts come after CI Games published Hexworks’ Lords of the Fallen last year, a Soulslike that sold more than 1 million copies in less than two weeks.
These CI Games layoffs join a string of other disheartening 2024 job cuts, which total more than 2,500. We recently learned Unity would be laying off 1,800 people by the end of March, and that Twitch was laying off 500 employees. Discord also announced it had laid off 170 employees. Yesterday, Game Informer covered layoffs happening at PTW, a support studio that’s worked with companies like Blizzard and Capcom, and at SteamWorld Build company, Thunderful Group, which let go of roughly 100 people. Earlier this morning, Game Informer covered news about Dead by Daylight developer Behaviour Interactive reportedly laying off 45 people, too.
Last year, more than 10,000 people in the games industry or game-adjacent industries were laid off.
In January of last year, Microsoft laid off 10,000 employees amidst its ongoing $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, which it completed in October.
Striking Distance Studios, the team behind 2022’s The Callisto Protocol, laid off more than 30 employees in August of 2023. That same month, Mass Effect and Dragon Age developer BioWare laid off 50 employees, including long-time studio veterans. The following month, in September, Immortals of Aveum developer Ascendant Studios laid off roughly 45% of its staff, and Fortnite developer Epic Games laid off 830 employees.
In October of last year, The Last of Us developer Naughty Dog laid off at least 25 employees, and Telltale Games also underwent layoffs, although an actual number of affected employees has not yet been revealed. Dreams developer Media Molecule laid off 20 employees in late October.
In November, Amazon Games laid off 180 staff members, Ubisoft laid off more than 100 employees, Bungie laid off roughly 100 developers, and 505 Games’ parent company, Digital Bros, laid off 30% of its staff.
In December, Embracer Group closed its reformed TimeSplitters studio, Free Radical Design, and earlier in the year, Embracer closed Saints Row developer Volition Games, a studio with more than 30 years of development history. A few weeks before the winter holidays, Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering owner Hasbro laid off 1,100 employees.
The games industry will surely feel the effects of such horrific layoffs for years to come. The hearts of the Game Informer staff are with everyone who’s been affected by layoffs or closures.
[Source: GamesIndustry.biz]