It’s a new year, but it seems the unfortunate trend of downsizing in gaming is continuing into 2024. CI Games, the publisher behind Lords Of The Fallen and the Sniper Ghost Warrior franchise, has laid off 10% of its staff. This news comes first reported by GamesIndustry.biz, who points to their sources saying they were finding postings of the layoffs by the staff affected on LinkedIn. They have since received confirmation of the layoffs from CI Games themselves.
It is currently unknown exactly how much 10% of their staff translates too, taking into account CI Games is a publication that owns two studios in Hexworks and Underdog Studios. These cuts come after Hexworks, who are the studio responsible for last year’s Lords Of The Fallen, sold more than 1 million copies in under two weeks. When asked about the cuts, CI Games CEO Marek Tymiński had this to say:
“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,” he tells GamesIndustry.Biz, “We would like to thank each of them for the part they’ve played during their time with us.” Marek Tymiński would also go on to say something distressing to those who survived this round of layoffs. He told GamesIndustry.Biz “Further business optimizations are being made to the organization’s pipelines and processes.” These “optimizations” may refer to future cuts from the publisher.
Still of gameplay from Lords Of The Fallen, which went on to sell over a million copies in under two weeks
These cuts by CI Games join the list of other disheartening news about layoffs in 2024. We haven’t gotten through the first month and the total already amounts to 2,300. According to a report from GameInformer, Unity plans to release at least 1,800 employees by March and Twitch has announced they are laying off 500 employees. Last year, more than 10,000 people were laid off from the gaming industry or gaming-adjacent industries. These included big names such as Ubisoft, Bungie, Epic Games and more.
Studio closures were also an unfortunate occurrence. Embracer Group closed multiple studios including Timesplitters Studios, Free Radical Design, and Volition Studios, the ones behind the Saints Row reboot. It’s a shame that a billion dollar industry has this kind of layoff rate, but hopefully those who were affected can find other homes to continue to create the games we enjoy.
Sources: GamesIndustry.biz, GameInformer.com
