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Jam City fired several employees today. According to the company, it has laid off about 17% of its staff. Given the number of employees, this is somewhere between 150 and 200 employees.
Jam City is the mobile developer behind such titles as Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery, Disney Emoji Blitz and, most recently, the blockchain game Champions Ascension. Last year, it canceled plans to go public through a $1.5 billion SPAC.
A Jam City spokesperson said in a statement: “In light of the challenging global economy and its impact on the gaming industry, Jam City has made the difficult decision to reduce the size of our team by approximately 17%. We have made a number of strategic acquisitions in recent years, and this move represents an appropriate size of our workforce to address layoffs related to those transactions.
“While Jam City remains profitable, in today’s business environment, we believe this is a necessary step to increase our financial agility and increase operational efficiency, making Jam City better positioned for long-term growth. This also follows a broader restructuring we recently completed to realign our development teams under genre divisions focused on content expertise to optimize performance. We thank those who leave us for their many contributions and offer severance packages and benefits to help with the transition.”
This comes less than a year after Jam City raised $350 million in funding at the same time it acquired Montreal-based studio Ludia. Jam City also has studios in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Las Vegas, Cedar Falls, and Toronto, as well as others in Bogota and Buenos Aires. It’s not clear whether studios are more affected by the layoffs than others.
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