Mobile dev TinyCo lays off 27 employees

Mobile developer TinyCo has laid off some 27 staff this week, a new report suggests.

An unnamed source told TechCrunch that the employees have been laid off at its offices in both San Francisco and Argentina.

“We’ve moved ten steps forward on executing a specific strategy around how we build games and what games we build. To execute against this strategy, we decided to consolidate game development out of our SF office and reduce our staff,” said CEO Suleman Ali.

“Laying people off sucks, especially since TinyCo has always been a breeding ground for great friendships. We’ll provide more updates, including a game launch, in the near future.”

News of these layoff comes just hours after former Mobile Pie developer Will Luton revealed he has joined the company.

TinyCo has been expanding fast since bagging $18 million in 2011 in a funding round lead by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, which has invested in the likes of Zynga and Groupon.

In August last year, the company opened a studio in Vancouver with ambitions to take on 60 new staff. Since then, however, there has been little news about it, and a look at TinyCo’s current job listings shows nothing for its Canadian studio.

The studio’s casual games, such as restaurant sim Tiny Chef and fantasy sim Tiny Monsters, were among some of the top-grossing apps in the US in 2011. This year, however, the studio’s top-grossing game, VIP Poker, only ranked 272, according to App Annie.