Deck Nine Games, the studio behind Life is Strange: True Colors and Telltale's The Expanse, has announced that it will be laying off a fifth of its staff due to “deteriorating market conditions.” It's the third developer to announce layoffs this week, and the fourth news of layoffs in the industry overall, and it's only Wednesday.
The developer tweeted The announcement of the layoffs said: “Like many others in the gaming industry, Deck Nine has been impacted by deteriorating market conditions in the gaming industry. Today we made the difficult decision to lay off 20% of our employees. These are the people.” “Amazing, talented and great developers. They have made a huge impact during their time at Deck Nine Games and we did not make this decision lightly. Please hire these people if you can, they are great.”
Eurogamer estimates that this percentage represents approximately 30 Deck Nine employees losing their jobs. However, that is roughly the same number of people who were canceled in May 2023 Game developer reported that the studio did not provide a reason for the layoffs.
The news came just hours after Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan announced that the company would be cutting 900 employees, just days before Ryan is set to step down from his post. Both layoffs followed Supermassive Games' announcement that 150 positions were “at risk” of layoffs earlier this week. Elsewhere in the industry, esports giant ESL Faceit Group announced yesterday that it would lay off around 15% of its global workforce to “support EFG’s sustainable growth ambitions and profitability”.
We are only two months into 2024 and the industry is already on pace to surpass the staggeringly high number of reported layoffs that took place last year. website Layoffs in the gaming industry According to estimates, around 10,500 jobs were cut in industry in 2023, and this year there are already over 7,000. PC Gamer's own estimates were around 11,250 employees last year. Our graphic shows that the increasing intensity of these layoffs paints a worrying picture for the future of the industry.
