Australian developer Mighty Kingdom has laid off 28% of staff as it downsizes its operations.

In a statement on X (formerly known as Twitter), the company’s CEO David Yin said it cut staff in an effort to “streamline our operations and prioritise core business to align with our vision for the future”.

Yin added the studio had “exhausted all possible avenues to avert these changes”. He said the remaining team would continue to support its current titles.

The studio shared a spreadsheet including details of 14 people impacted by the redundancies, which can be found here.

Cost cutting

Founded in 2010 and based in Adelaide, Australia, Mighty Kingdom has worked on more than 20 games across platforms, attracting over 50 million players. Titles it’s worked on include Star Trek Lower Decks Mobile, Conan Chop Chop and Solitaire Story - Ava's Manor.

Last year, Star Trek: Lower Decks, which Mighty Kingdom developed in partnership with East Side Games and Paramount, won the Best Storytelling award at the Pocket Gamer Mobile Games Awards.

As spotted by Game Developer, Mighty Kingdom issued a trading update with investors, stating the move would result in annualised cost savings of $2.1 million.

“The revised structure ensures the company can continue to execute on existing projects with key partners whilst providing flexibility to build and scale as new opportunities are secured,” read a statement.

"Consistent distractions"

Earlier this year, Mighty Kingdom shareholders rejected a resolution from the company’s former CEO Shane Yeen to remove the current board of directors.

At the time, the studio’s chair David Butorac said in talks with shareholders, there had been a “consistent theme of these distractions have to stop and the company needs to get on with restoring shareholder value”.

“This will be our primary focus as we rebuild Mighty Kingdom and work towards finalising arrangements for strategic investment," he said.