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Pearl's Peril developer Wooga lays off 30 staff as it refocuses on story-driven casual games

Company restructures from in-house studio structure to one based around dev cycles

Pearl's Peril developer Wooga lays off 30 staff as it refocuses on story-driven casual games

Berlin-based developer Wooga has laid off 30 staff as part of new plans to focus on story-driven casual games.

The move comes just over a year after the studio restructured to focus on three distinct areas of casual games: puzzle, hidden object and casual simulation. At the time this resulted in 40 job losses.

Now the company is narrowing its goals once again, this time with a focus on story-driven casual titles where it hopes to become the market leader.

This comes on the back of success with its long-term hit Pearl’s Peril and 2017 release June’s Journey.

Organisational revamp

To this end, the company is dropping its in-house studio structure, where each ‘studio’ was responsible for the entire dev cycle of a particular genre.

Now it aims to organise its teams around lifecycles, meaning the different phases of development such as pre-released and live operations will be largely handled by different staff.

“These changes mean that we will be parting ways with circa 30 Wooga employees today,” said Wooga CEO Jens Begemann.

“This decision was not one we took lightly but is necessary in order to fulfil our ambitions to become a market leader in this segment.

“Change is always difficult and it is sad to see friends go. We will do our best to support the employees affected as part of this shift in strategy and ensure the transition to the next step in their career is as easy as possible.”


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Craig Chapple is a freelance analyst, consultant and writer with specialist knowledge of the games industry. He has previously served as Senior Editor at PocketGamer.biz, as well as holding roles at Sensor Tower, Nintendo and Develop.