The wave of layoffs in the gaming industry continues. This time the sad news came again from Unity.
The game engine company will reportedly send home 1,800 of its workers. That number is around 25 percent of its total employees, quoted by Game Station from Reuters, Wednesday (10/1/2023).
This is the largest layoff in history that Unity has ever experienced. They hope that the dismissal process can be completed by the end of March 2024.
“We are reducing the number of things we do to focus on our core business and drive long-term success and profitability,” interim CEO Jim Whitehurst wrote in an internal memo sent to all employees on January 8.
But here Whitehurst does not provide specific details regarding the structural changes that will occur in Unity. Only a company spokesperson confirmed that there will indeed be updates in the future.
Yes, Whitehurst is the new CEO of Unity, after the previous John Ricetello decided to resign. This was done after the new policy issue which was protested by many game developers around the world.
The root of the problem lies in the new payment scheme which uses a pay per download system. In this scheme, Unity will charge fees for using the game engine based on the number of game installations, and it is said that this concept will be implemented on January 1, 2024.
As additional information, this is the fourth round of layoffs carried out by the company. More than 1,100 people were laid off in 2023, preceded by at least 200 layoffs in June 2022.
These latest layoffs continue a bad trend in the video game industry, which saw around six thousand jobs lost by 2023. It doesn’t look like things will get any better in 2024.