Finnish developer Nitro Gamescould lay off and change the contract terms of as many as 30 employees as it gets set to enter cooperation negotiations with staff.
The move is required by Finnish law when companies with more than 20 employees decided to reduce their workforce.
As of December 31st 2018, Nitro Games employed 51 staff. Cooperation negotiations will begin on February 25th and are expected to last around six weeks.
Nitro is looking at laying off staff, changing some employees from full-time to part-time status and “restructuring of functions and duties”. The exact number of staff affected will depend on discussions and the company's outlook following the proceedings.
Losses deepen
The news comes as the developer reported a rise in revenue of 28.5 per cent in 2018 to €2.2 million ($2.5m). Net losses however came in at €5.7m ($6.5m), an increase from €3,3m ($3.7m) in 2017
For Q4 2018 alone, revenue actually fell year-on-year to €407k. Net losses amounted to €2.3m ($2.5m), an increase from €1.7m ($1.9m) the year prior.
Nitro Games cited the non-satisfactory game performance of its new title Heroes of Warland, though stated there had been positive results in marketing and user acquisition. The company hopes to improve earnings from the title in Q1.
“During the first half of 2018, we focused on the development of game projects to build our portfolio according to our strategy,” said Nitro Games CEO Jussi Tähtinen.
“Moving forward to the second half our focus was in finalising the development and moving forward towards the launch stage with our projects. This concluded with the completion of our development project with Wargaming and in the launch of our own game Heroes of Warland.”
“We are not pleased with our achievements at the end of 2018, since we had challenges during the initial launch stage for Heroes of Warland. We have now taken actions in 2019 to remedy this situation. As a result of these actions, we are now confident about moving forward in 2019.”
Nitro Games’ portfolio includes titles such as the aforementioned Heroes of Warland and Medals of War. The Finnish developer went public in June 2017 on the NASDAQ First North Stockholm with an $8.45 million market cap.
