Square Enix, the developer-publisher behind this year’s Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, is set to lay off an unspecified number of employees at its US and European offices, which are based in California and the UK, respectively, this week. According to those in attendance, Square Enix president Takashi Kiryu broke the news at a company-wide meeting, as first reported by VideoGamesChronicle.
Cuts like these were suspected after Square Enix’s latest financial earnings report, which included a three-year plan to reboot the company with an “aggressive” multi-platform launch strategy after a slide mentioned “structural reforms.” You can see the slide below:
As you can see above, as part of Square Enix’s plan to rebuild its overseas business units from scratch, the company “began to optimize costs in its European and American offices through structural reforms.” After more than 10,000 layoffs at game studios and publishers this year, it’s easy to read between the lines—structural reforms sound a lot like “cuts,” and now VGC confirm this.
The outlet reports that those cuts will happen over the next month, with those affected to find out this week. The total number of expected layoffs is not known, but VGCSources say employees have been told it will mostly affect those working in Square Enix’s publishing, IT and collective indie games division.
Redundant employees in the UK will enter a “one-month consultation period” in accordance with local UK law, while affected employees in the US may leave their jobs potentially before the end of the month.
These layoffs join a string of other disheartening layoffs and closures in 2024 that now total more than 10,000 in the first five months of the year alone.
Earlier this month, Xbox shut down four Bethesda studios, including Hi-Fi Rush developer Tango Gameworks and Redfall studio Arkane Austin. Take-Two Interactive has closed Rollerdrome Roll7 studio and Kerbal Space Program 2 studio Intercept Games along with major layoffs at its indie publisher Private Division. That same week, we learned that Deliver Us Mars developer Keoken Interactive has laid off nearly its entire staff.
Elsewhere in the year, EA laid off approximately 670 employees across all departments, leading to the cancellation of Respawn’s Star Wars FPS game. PlayStation laid off 900 employees at Insomniac, Naughty Dog, Guerrilla and others, closing London Studio in the process. A day earlier, Until Dawn developer Supermassive Games announced that it had laid off 90 employees.
In late January, we learned that Embracer Group had canceled a new Deus Ex game in development at Eidos-Montréal and laid off 97 employees in the process. Also in January, Destroy All Humans remake developer Black Forest Games cut 50 jobs, and Microsoft announced it was cutting 1,900 jobs across its Xbox, Activision Blizzard and ZeniMax teams. Outriders studio People Can Fly laid off more than 30 employees in January, and League of Legends company Riot Games laid off 530 employees.
Lords of the Fallen publisher CI Games has laid off 10 percent of its staff, Unity will lay off 1,800 people by the end of March, and Twitch has laid off 500 employees.
We’ve also learned that Discord has laid off 170 employees, that layoffs have occurred at PTW, a support studio that works with the likes of Blizzard and Capcom, and that SteamWorld Build’s Thunderful Group company has let go roughly 100 people. Dead by Daylight developer Behavior Interactive has also reportedly laid off 45 people.
[Source: VideoGamesChronicle]
