The two game companies Unity and Niantic have laid off numerous employees.
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Engine developer Unity is laying off four percent of its employees.
© Unity
Niantic, the developer studio behind “Pokémon GO” announced this week that it wants to lay off eight percent of its workforce. It is estimated that 85 to 90 employees will have to go. In an e-mail to his employees, which the news agency Bloomberg has obtained, CEO John Hanke explains that the layoffs are intended to reduce costs.
Four games are canceled
In addition to the layoffs, Niantic also wants to save on the defacement of several games. According to the company, the Transformers games “Heavy Metal”, “Hamlet”, “Blue Sky” and “Snowball” will no longer be completed. The recently introduced titles “Peridot” and “NBA All-World” do not seem to be affected by the cost-cutting measures.
Savings at Unity
There are also layoffs at the game engine developer Unity. After rumors of job cuts surfaced this week, Unity confirmed in a statement today that about four percent of the workforce will be laid off.
“As part of an ongoing planning process where we regularly align our resources with our business priorities, we have decided to realign some of our resources to better focus and support our long-term growth. This led to some tough decisions affecting about 4 percent of the entire Unity workforce.”
says the statement. The layoffs appear to affect the areas of AI and engineering in particular. CEO John Riccitiello had reassured his employees just two weeks ago by saying that no job cuts were planned.
