Playtika has announced the layoffs of 15 percent of its staff, with over 600 of the Israeli publisher’s employees losing their jobs, reports Mobilegamer.biz.
According to an email to staff from CEO Robert Antokol yesterday, this will be done by “balancing teams and redeploying talent, winding down non-core initiatives and consolidating studios for greater efficiency.”
The email states that three current titles have been removed from production, while subsidiary Wooga will be the focus of the “evaluation of new game concepts.” At present, it isn’t clear which of the company’s games will be shuttered.
Team members affected by the layoffs will have one-on-one conversations with management throughout the week, where they will be told how Playtika will support them through the transition and be able to discuss the situation.
Playtika has had several significant rounds of layoffs this year, shuttering three studios in June, including Best Fiends developer Seriously, with around 250 employees losing their jobs as a result. This brings the total jobs lost due to layoffs to over 850 members of staff, over 20 percent of the 4000 employees the company listed in May.
A company in trouble?
Outside of the layoffs, Playtika has had a turbulent year. Through Wooga, the company launched and quickly shuttered the title Switchcraft in May due to it falling short of expectations, while Joffre Capital announced last week that it’s seeking to abandon its deal to acquire a stake in the company due to governance issues, stating that the board being controlled largely by company management represents a conflict of interest.
Stock has also fallen significantly year-on-year, with the company trading at $8 per share at the time of writing, compared to around $18 a year ago and $27 when the company first went public in January 2021.
Is the company in trouble? Well, companies have bounced back from worse. Israel remains a strong performer in the global games industry, being worth an estimated $9 billion, with mobile being the most popular platform for developers and players alike and Playtika singled out as one of the biggest mobile game companies in the country. It would therefore be unwise to make any statements about the company’s long-term prospects, as a bounce back is certainly possible.
