Rovio laying off 130 staff

Angry Birds developer Rovio is to lay off as many as 130 employees at its Finland HQ.

CEO Mikael Hed said the company had been expanding on the assumptions of faster growth “than has materialised”. The redundancies amount to around 16 per cent of Rovio’s entire workforce.

“We are an entrepreneurial company and have been exploring multiple areas,” said Hed.

“We have been building our team on assumptions of faster growth than have materialised. As a result, we announced today that we plan to simplify our organisation around our three key businesses with the highest growth potential: games, media, and consumer products. Unfortunately, we also need to consider possible employee reductions of a maximum of 130 people in Finland (approximately 16 per cent of workforce).

“It is never easy to consider changes like this, but it is better to do them sooner rather than later, when we are in a good place to reignite growth.”