Yesterday, news broke out that the entire dev team behind Humble Games was laid off. This information came from employees working at the company and posted it on their LinkedIn accounts. Senior QA Emilee Kieffer made the post across Linkedin and their X account to explain the situation. Humble Games is responsible for publishing well-known indie games, such as Unpacking, Slay the Spire, and Coral Island.
However, despite yesterday’s statements by the laid-off staff, Humble Games has since made a statement that they did not lay off the entire team but are “restructuring” the company and will not be closing down. According to Emilee Kieffer, in a post on X, roughly 40 staff members were laid off from the Humble Games team. However, the numbers regarding how many staff were made redundant have not yet been confirmed.
“In these challenging economic times for indie publishing, Humble Games has made the difficult but necessary decision to restructure our operations. This decision was not made lightly; it involved much deliberation and careful thought, with the goal of ensuring the stability and support of our developers and ongoing projects,” says a Humble Bundle Press representative in an official statement.
The statement also confirms that Humble Games’ restructuring will have no effect on Humble Bundle and that it will resume operations as usual. The statement also says, “We are acutely aware of the profound impact this decision has on our team members at Humble Games and deeply empathize with everyone affected. Our team’s contributions have been world-class and invaluable, supporting the launch of our games since we started publishing in 2017.”
Humble Games also has upcoming projects like Lost Skies, On Your Tail, and Monaco II. What will happen with these projects, whether the developers will have to find different publishers for the games, and whether the projects can continue as normal remains unseen.
In the past year alone, 11,000 people have been laid off across the gaming industry, surpassing the numbers of 2023, with 10,500 people being laid off across the entire year. Most of the layoffs of 2024 thus far happened at the very early beginning of the year, quickly surpassing those in 2023.
It remains unknown whether IGN Entertainment will make a statement on the layoffs at the moment, as they purchased Humble Games in 2017, what this means for the future of Humble Bundle as a whole, and whether this will eventually affect Humble Bundle.
