Kixeye lays off 20 staff

Mobile developer Kixeye has laid off 20 employees.

Parent company Stillfront said the cuts were “a natural step” following the studio’s acquisition last year, but insisted it would have “no effect on our portfolio and the business in general”.

“When we made the acquisition, Kixeye consisted of two ‘operations,'” Stillfront Group CEO Jörgen Larsson told GI.biz. “One with focus on developing Kixeye’s four strong IPs and one with full focus on developing the MMO product Kingdom Maker. Before the transaction took place, the assets pertaining to the development [of] Kingdom Maker were divested to Global Worldwide.

“During the Autumn we have focused on setting up the ‘new’ Kixeye operations with focus on the four existing IPs as well as development of new titles. We have trimmed the organization somewhat as a natural step after the split and therefore around 20 persons have left their positions with us. 

“This has no effect on our portfolio and the business in general. Kixeye is already up to speed and collaborates with several of the studios in the Group and we are all looking forward to continue to develop existing and new games.”

These latest layoffs sadly come on the back of several other closures and cutbacks we’ve seen across studios in recent months, most recently UK studio Ultimatum Games, HQ Trivia, PlayStation’s Manchester Studio, Fantasy Flight Interactive, Gameloft, Amazon Game Studios and PayDay developer, Starbreeze. Sony’s Manchester studio, which focused on titles for PlayStation’s virtual reality system, also recently shuttered. It took in many of the staff affected by the closure of Driveclub developer Evolution back in 2016. 

Other recent layoffs and closures include Iron Tiger Studios, ArenaNet, Next Games, Forgotten Key, Define Human Studios, Bandai Namco Vancouver, and Trion Worlds. Telltale Games also laid off its staff in a studio closure back in September 2018.