Mobile game developer Jam City laid off nearly two hundred workers

The developer cut off nearly 17% of its workforce due to “restructuring” the firm for the upcoming times.
Jam City game characters and studio logo side by side

The mobile game studio laid off 150 to 200 (about 17% of its staff) employees across all its offices, including the Montreal-based studio Ludia. Jam City is quite a popular company among mobile game developers; the studio is behind popular mobile titles like Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery, Jurassic World Alive, Panda Pop, Cookie Jam, and many others.

Jam City entered the blockchain space and introduced its first NFT game back in December 2021, and the video game entity acquired Ludia just a few months before that. The USA-based developer raised $350 million in equity at the same time it picked up Ludia.

A spokesperson for Jam City said while the company remains profitable, the management saw the layoffs as a necessary move to enhance its financial flexibility and increase operating efficiencies. The spokesperson also said the decision wasn’t taken lightly but had to be done “In light of the challenging global economy and its impact on the gaming industry”

The spokesperson added the following comment to the statement:

“Jam City has made the difficult decision to reduce the size of our team by about 17%. In recent years, we have made a number of strategic acquisitions, and this move represents a right sizing of our workforce to address redundancies associated with those transactions.

“We thank those who are leaving us for their many contributions and are providing severance packages and benefits to help with the transition.”

Polygon interviewed some of the current and laid-off workers; the majority of the employees said the layoffs were unexpected and came as a surprise. An employee who’s still with Jam City said:

“People are really upset. Ludia’s treated us very well over the years. They’ve done a lot to try to take care of us, but since the acquisition, that attitude seems to be changing. We’ve tried to have our voices heard, but we’ve, in general, seemed to be ignored. We feel voiceless.”

Per the workers Polygon interviewed, the company has been laying off people for some time, but this one is by far the largest.

NEXT: Unity lays off 4% of staff to realign its resourcesUnity-revenues

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *