Summary

  • Ziff Davis announced yesterday that it was restructuring Humble Games amid reports of mass layoffs.
  • Former creative lead Chris Radley says that this is untrue and that all 36 staff have been laid off.
  • Other employees reportedly allege that Ziff Davis shutdown Humble Games because it did not understand how game development worked and wanted money now.

Yesterday, parent company Ziff Davis announced that it was restructuring publisher Humble Games (Unpacking, Slay the Spire, Signalis) amid reports of mass layoffs. It has since come to light that all 36 staff have been laid off and that future projects will be outsourced.

Humble Bundle, from which Humble Games spun off, has not been impacted.

In response to Ziff Davis' statement, former creative lead Chris Radley wrote on LinkedIn that "This is NOT a restructuring of operations. This is a total shutdown of Humble Games. Operations have been handed off to a third-party consultancy. NO staff are left.

"This was ONCE AGAIN a failure of leadership across the board, and once again hard-working talented staff are paying the cost for their poor decisions. Every ex-employee is being gaslit by this narrative and it's so disrespectful."

Former Humble Staff Claim That Ziff Davis Didn't Understand The Gaming Model

Speaking to Aftermath, former employees allege that the layoffs and gutting of Humble Games were not in response to subsidiary company IGN's recent acquisition of Gamer Network media sites such as Eurogamer, Rock Paper Shotgun, GamesIndustry.biz, and VG247, which led to their own mass layoffs. Instead, they claim that Ziff Davis wanted money now, something which it wasn't seeing from the publisher.

"Ziff is very good at owning a lot of media and increasing revenue in advertising, and Humble Games publishing was just not something that agreed with their business model," one former employee reportedly said. "They needed money. They needed it now. They wanted to see an immediate increase in revenue after investing cash into a business, and unfortunately that's just now how games work".

Another employee allegedly said that "Ziff Davis does not understand the world of game development" and that when they learned that games take years to make, not mere months, "They simply decided they did not want to be in that business anymore. Their decision was not rational and will really hurt indie development in the long run".

Next

After The Layoffs, The Industry Needs To Course Correct

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