Kabam, developers of Marvel’s Contest of Champions, and Disney Mirrorverse has laid off 12% of its workforce according to a statement sent to Kotaku writer Ethan Gach.
The developer has made the lay-offs in a number of positions including creatives, QA and liveops. The latest round of redundancies comes after 7% of its workforce was laid off in November of 2022, also as part of a restructuring. A number of studios such as Offworld Industries are already soliciting former employees of Kabam with job openings.
2023 has already been a rather lay-off heavy year, with redundancies in companies as broad as game creation platform Unity, developer Team17 and MTG-owned InnoGames. With many of these credited to restructuring, macroeconomic circumstances and more.
The statement reads, “In light of current economics and the industry’s market realities, after reviewing our strategic priorities, Kabam has made the difficult decision to reduce its workforce by 12 percent.
“This restructuring provides greater financial flexibility to invest in new growth areas while also streamlining our existing development teams. We want to thank those leaving Kabam today for their contributions and we are supporting them through this challenging transition.”
Layoff the layoffs
The number of layoffs and redundancies across the gaming industry and the wider tech world after a high level of growth due to remote working and stay-at-home orders boosting a number of industries including mobile gaming during the Covid-19 pandemic. Companies eager to cut costs and demonstrate prudent spending at a time when recession is possible (and even hitting countries like Germany already) are taking aim at cutting employees where they believe necessary.
These cost-cutting measures also reflect a wider post-Covid slump that has hit mobile gaming companies, as well as more localised issues such as the Chinese gaming licence freeze that has led to companies like Tencent investing heavily into international ventures. With companies such as Embracer also losing out on big deals relatively early into the year, we’re unlikely to see an end to these redundancies yet.
