Layoffs At People Can Fly And Reikon Games, Thousands Lost Their Jobs This Year

General news News 01/27/2024

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The first month of 2024 is not even over yet, but the number of job losses in the games industry this year is already in the four digits.

Kotakuhas discovered that People Can Fly has laid off about thirty people from its yet-to-be-announced game for Square Enix, Project Gemini, scheduled for 2026. Kotaku reported the layoffs at the Polish company, citing budget constraints and a shrinking vision for the game, based on an email from development director Adam Alker. It is not known if the cuts will result in a delay of the game.

Kotaku also wrote about Reikon Games. They released their action game Ruiner in 2017. They are rumored to have laid off about 80% (!!!) of their staff. That’s about 60-70 people, and the site quoted sources saying that the cuts were unexpected and shocking. The studio had been working on a sci-fi FPS that was announced in 2021 by the then new branch of Embracer Group, Prime Matter. The game was called Final Form, and the announcement at the time said it would take you beyond the boundaries of the known world to race against an unstoppable plague to protect the last celestial being, the essence of life and creation. The video was made private on YouTube on Prime Matter’s channel (not Reikon’s) and the status of the project is unknown.

Farhan Noor, a technical artist, runs a website called Video Games Layoffs, which tracks how many people have lost their jobs in the games industry in a given year. In 2023, the number was about 10,500 people, and in 2024, the number is 5,600. To reiterate, January isn’t even over yet, and there are already NOW half as many people out on the street as there were last year for all of last year combined. Microsoft contributed to this by laying off 1900 people (Activision Blizzard was hit hard), Riot confirmed 530 layoffs on Tuesday (about 11% of their workforce), and Unity also announced that they plan to lay off about 25% of their workforce, or about 1800 people…

It’s been a terrible year.

Source: WCCFTech, VGC, VGC

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Angyal Anikó

Anikó, our news editor and communication manager, is more interested in the business side of the gaming industry. She worked at banks, and she has a vast knowledge of business life. Still, she likes puzzle and story-oriented games, like Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments, which is her favourite title. She also played The Sims 3, but after accidentally killing a whole sim family, swore not to play it again. (For our office address, email and phone number check out our IMPRESSUM)