// PC GAMER — GAMING
Industry layoff watch: Supermassive, Ninja Theory, The Coalition, and a warning from Warhorse
No layoffs have been announced for The Coalition, but some Gears of War: E-Day developers are worried they'll be next, even if the game succeeds.
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The plague of games industry layoffs and studio closures that seemed to explode in 2023 has yet to subside. Just about every week there's news of some new restructuring, closure, or cancellation as the videogame industry, particularly in North America, is battered by global economic forces, corporate maneuvering, and private capital.
Here's the latest news related to the crisis that continues to unfold:
In August, three months after the release of Directive 8020, Supermassive issued a statement saying that up to 75 of its employees were at risk of layoff. LinkedIn posts from multiple former Supermassive employees (via Insider Gaming) indicate that those layoffs have now been completed, and that effectively everyone who was at risk of redundancy was let go.
"More than 70 brilliant people are leaving Supermassive: developers, artists, producers, QA, operations and more," Frank Tindle, IT and facilities director at Supermassive who'd been with the studio for 16 years, wrote on LinkedIn. "Any studio would be lucky to have them."
It came to light in June that Microsoft was planning to either close or sell off Senua studio Ninja Theory, even as the studio unveiled a new game at Summer Game Fest. In July, amidst the big "Xbox Reset," it announced Ninja Theory had been sold, but then in September it said two attempts to divest the studio had fallen through, and so it was moving toward a closure instead.
That now appears to be happening, as multiple employees on LinkedIn have reported over the past week that they have either been let go, or are at risk of losing their jobs. (Ninja Theory, like Supermassive, is based in the UK, where a legally-mandated consultation period is required ahead of actual layoffs. Technically, employees in the consultancy process are not certain of layoff, but practically speaking—as seen with Supermassive—it's about as close as you can come without actually being shown the door.)
"It's incredibly sad knowing that we won't get to finish what we were working on," gameplay programmer Katrin Mair wrote about the cuts. "So much care, talent and effort went into it, and I really wish we'd had the chance to see what it could have become."
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