The waves of layoffs in the games industry (unfortunately) just continue – and this time CI Games, the makers of the current action role-playing game Lords of the Fallen, have been hit.
The Polish developer and publisher CI Games, known for the shooter series Sniper: Ghost Warrior and the current action RPG remake Lords of the Fallen, is the next company in the video game industry to be hit by a wave of layoffs. According to this, around 10 percent of the entire workforce has to give up and look for a new job.
The industry magazine first reported on the layoffs GamesIndustry.biz reported, which later also received a clarifying and confirming statement from Marek Tyminski, the CEO of CI Games. Accordingly, the layoffs are necessary in order to “increase business strength and stability [des Unternehmens] to ensure”.
In the end, this probably means nothing other than the financial stability of the company. In addition to the now known layoffs, according to Tyminski, “further business optimizations will be made to the organizational processes.” What this means in concrete terms remains to be seen and is not yet known.
Employees of the CI Games marketing team initially reported on the layoffs on LinkedIn; Based on these postings, the development studios Hexworks and Underdog are also likely to be affected.
Most recently, the development team CI Games was able to impress with the action role-playing game Lords of the Fallen, which was only published in October 2023. The reboot of the 2014 game of the same name with its Soulsborne approach received largely good reviews and sold over a million copies in the first week of sales after release. Despite these seemingly successful figures, the layoffs were now apparently unavoidable.
Unfortunately, the still young year 2024 continues in the same way as the previous year 2023 went. Last year, many employees were laid off in numerous (including large) studios, and this year it hit Lost Boys Interactive – the developers of Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands – and the video game service Discord.
2023 was a fantastic year for gaming and one “genre” in particular had a lot of new blood: the Souls-likes. Colleague Dennis died at least twice to tell you today which representatives come particularly close to From Software’s works.
