Social games maker Belka Games laid off 20% of staff at the end of April, impacting upwards of 33 people across level design, narrative design, programming, community management and more.

A number of Belka’s team leads have been laid off too, as part of the company’s new, more critical strategy. The news broke through multiple posts on LinkedIn with the team tagging themselves as "Open for work".

Belka Games’ lead narrative designer Alexander Pugachev posted on LinkedIn a list of 33 team members laid off, hoping to help them "land a new job".

Meanwhile, Belka Games CEO Alexander Bogdanov confirmed to WNHub that the "difficult decision" had been made to let go of 20% of staff.

A familiar strategy

Known for games such as the Victorian match-3 title Clockmaker and merge-based island renovator Roger That, Belka Games has a large portfolio dating back to 2010. Headquartered in Cyprus, the company also has offices in Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Georgia, Montenegro and the United Arab Emirates.

The layoffs appear to span many of these offices; support team lead Sergey Goretsky and lead QA engineer Eugenia Elinskaya are among the staff laid off and are based in Montenegro and Lithuania respectively. 2D artist Anastasia Melnikova, based in Poland, has also been let go.

"The company has adjusted its strategy, as a result of which we have become more critical of the products. A difficult decision was made to reduce 20% of the team. We are grateful to everyone for their invaluable contribution to the development of Belka Games, and we use all our resources so that the guys can find new career opportunities," Bogdanov said.

And layoffs continue across the industry. Vancouver-based dev A Thinking Ape also recently laid off employees across multiple departments as restructuring efforts get underway.

And with over 8,700 games industry layoffs in 2024 so far, the IGDA has called for "sustainable measures" to confront the issue, concerned about mental health, morale, and the risk of driving talent away.