Gaming industry: Unity and Niantic lay off employees

Unity, the company behind the game engine of the same name, is laying off about 4 percent of its staff. According to previous media reports, the company has now confirmed this. This step is justified by a reallocation of resources. Niantic, the studio behind the AR game Pokémon Go, is also cutting jobs. About the layoffs at Unity first had kotaku reported from own sources and spoken by “hundreds” of affected employees.

In the meantime, the company itself has confirmed in a statement that about 4 percent of its total workforce will have to look for a new job as part of a “continuous planning process”. Noisy game industry In its most recent SEC Filing report, Unity cited a workforce of 5,245 full-time employees across 54 departments in 21 countries. A share of around 4 percent would mean laying off just over 200 employees; Kotaku’s sources had previously even talked about 300 to 400.

The company regrets these “difficult decisions”, thanks those affected for their contribution thus far and offers support in changing jobs. In an anonymous bulletin board, alleged employees have previously delivered Notes on the inner workings of Unity Unity achieved a significantly higher turnover of 1.1 billion dollars last year. However, the operating loss amounted to approximately USD 532 million compared to 2020, almost twice as much. Recently, the financial outlook of the listed company has been revised downwards, Games industry reports.

Also fired at Niantic

Developer studio Niantic celebrated a huge success with the augmented reality game Pokémon Go. However, it was published many years ago and since then there has been a lack of major titles. Like Jason Schreier reported for Bloomberg, Niantic will now lay off 80 to 90 employees, or 8 percent of its workforce, as well as halt four ongoing projects. In an email to employees, CEO John Hanke spoke of “economic turbulence”, which must be countered with rationalization measures.

With an estimated $1.9 billion in revenue from Pokémon Go in 2020 alone, the move seems difficult. However, Niantic had a real flop with the AR title Harry Potter: Wizards Unite: the game was discontinued two and a half years after publication. Most recently, Niantic’s focus has been on creating a “real world metaverse” also based on AR cloud technology’s own AR glasses.