Reports are coming in that 300 to 400 more jobs are to go at Israeli gaming company Playtikafollowing a troubled year kicked off by major job losses at the end of 2022.
Most recently, in December 2022 the company parted ways with 600 employees – 15% of its staff. A rocky 2023 began when it was unsuccessful in its attempts to spend its way to success through an acquisition of Angry Birds maker Rovio. The company eventually sold to Sega in parallel negotiations soon after.
Previous to that Playtika had several significant rounds of layoffs in 2022, shuttering three studios in June 2022, including Best Fiends developer Seriously, with around 250 employees losing their jobs as a result.
A tough two years
The company currently employs around 3,800 employees with the latest round of redundancies seeing them part ways with 10% of their staff. Of that total 1,100 are based in Israel. It’s understood that the latest layoffs are not set to affect its Israeli offices.
Playtika stock has fallen significantly year-on-year, with the company currently trading at around $8 per share at the time of writing, this is compared to around $18 in 2022 and $27 when the company first went public in January 2021.
Israel remains a strong performer in the global games industry, being worth an estimated $9 billion, with mobile being the most popular platform for developers and players alike and Playtika singled out as one of the biggest mobile game companies in the country.
We’ll have more information on those affected by the latest layoffs shortly.
