Pokemon Go’s Niantic Cancels Four Projects And Lays Off Around 90 Employees

Pokemon Go developer Niantic seems to be in quite a bind as the studio announces the cancellation of four in-development projects and the layoff of 85 to 90 employees. The projects in question include Blue Sky, Snowball, Hamlet, and the Transformers: Heavy Metal MMOARPG that the studio announced last year.

Niantic CEO John Hanke told Bloomberg that the company is currently “facing a time of economic turmoil” and that they’ve already begun reducing costs in various areas. “We recently decided to stop production on some projects and reduce our workforce by about 8% to focus on our key priorities,” said a spokesperson for the studio. “We are grateful for the contributions of those leaving Niantic and we are supporting them through this difficult transition.”

The announcement comes just a few months after Niantic announced its new augmented reality pet-raising game, Peridot, and a few days after announcing its partnership with the NBA on a game called NBA All-World.

Niantic is best known for creating augmented reality games that made use of both digital interfaces and real world images captured by a player’s camera. Unfortunately, the studio has struggled to follow up on the immense popularity and success of Pokemon Go. It’s released several other game since then all of which were deemed unsuccessful, including Harry Potter: Wizards Unite which was shut down just over two years since its initial launch.