A wave of layoffs has reached Nexters. The company announced the reduction of almost a quarter of the team. It is reported that this is a forced measure, a response to a number of challenges that the company has recently faced.
During a video message to the company’s employees, Andrey Fadeev, co-founder and CEO of Nexters, revealed the situation as follows (we briefly give the general meaning of the speech on the theses provided):
- this year Nexters faced a number of negative external factors at the same time;
- among them: rising inflation in key markets, changes in privacy rules, recent geopolitical events;
- therefore, in recent months, the company had to develop and launch anti-crisis measures (including cost optimization);
- in the course of optimization, the company faced difficulties, partly due to the fact that in 2021 the number of Nexters doubled (to 900 people);
- as a result, it was decided to “take a step back“, namely to reduce the size of the team.
“This difficult decision was made after careful consideration of all possible options. However, it was deemed necessary to ensure the sustainability of the company. And we consider this decision to be exhaustive. No more layoffs are planned, we continue to work,” Fadeev said.
The reduction affected specialists working in Russia, Turkey, Armenia, Georgia, Cyprus and other countries. In total, we are talking about the dismissal of 235 people (as it became known to the editorial board from a third-party source, completely different specialists were fired: “from system administrators to producers with testers“).
We also managed to ask Andrey two additional questions about the situation. The first concerned the conditions under which layoffs occur.
We provide compensation in the amount of several salaries, extend the validity of the VMI for two months, provide psychological support, provide recommendations, and also provide assistance in finding a job — we send information about employees to friendly recruiting agencies.
Co-founder and CEO of Nexters
The second question was about who was primarily affected by the dismissal.
Since we need to improve the efficiency of the entire company, these changes have affected every department or division. The location of employees also did not play any role - the changes affected employees in Russia, Cyprus, Armenia, Georgia and other countries. In the current conditions, we need to be as efficient as possible and focus on the main tasks and functions that will allow Nexters to increase the stability of the business and cope with the influence of various external negative factors. It was this principle that we followed when deciding who, unfortunately, we would have to part with — focus on the main tasks and competencies within the company and within each team. We are grateful to every employee, for us this is a forced measure.
Co-founder and CEO of Nexters