Behaviour Interactive And CI Games Joins Growing List Of Studios Hit By Layoffs
Two more video game companies have been added to the rapidly growing list of companies that suffered layoffs over the past two years. Dead by Daylight developer Behaviour Interactive confirmed that it recently laid off 40 of its employees, while Lord of the Fallen’s publisher CI Games announced a 10% reduction in its workforce.
The job cuts come in spite of the apparent success of both studios. Dead by Daylight, in particular, has been enjoying a multi-year run in the spotlight with high-profile transmedia crossovers including Child’s Play (Chucky) and Alan Wake collaborations.
“Recently, changing market conditions necessitated adjusting the scope of several Behaviour projects,” Behaviour Interactive told PCGamer. “In these situations, our preference is always to reassign talent to other projects. Unfortunately, this option is not always available to us. These departures represented less than 3% of our total workforce.”
The layoffs at CI Games, on the other hand, have mostly been limited to the studio’s marketing team. GamesIndustry.biz, however, reports that its Underdog and Hexworks subsidiaries were also affected.
“To preserve business strength and stability, CI Games has made the tough but necessary decision to implement a targeted round of redundancies, affecting approximately 10% of employees across the company,” announced CI Games CEO Marek Tymiński.
The continued downsizing and layoffs sweeping across the video game and tech industries is largely attributed to aggressive ramping during the COVID-19 pandemic as demand for quarantine entertainment drastically increased. Now that everyone is free to move around again, that demand has subsequently dropped, prompting industry-wide budget cuts and restructuring.
