The creators of the Angry Birds series have announced the beginning of a restructuring of their business, in which the company plans to lay off up to 260 people.
As stated in the official press release, Rovio is going to focus its efforts in three main areas: games, media and consumer goods. Based on this, she begins staff reduction.
The layoffs will affect all structures of the company, except those involved in the production of The Angry Birds Movie, which is due to be released in May next year. Rovio units located in the USA and Canada are currently working on the film.
“This is not an easy decision. Nevertheless, it is obvious that Rovio needs to become more selective and more flexible in order to achieve new successes in the future,” said Pekka Rantala, CEO of the company.
The restructuring is most likely related to two points.
Firstly, the original Angry Birds is still the main hit for Rovio. Comparable in success with this game, Rovio, despite the large number of releases, has not released.
The second point echoes the first. Angry Birds 2 is one of those projects that earn cash on the name of the original, first title, and not by themselves. Despite the 50 million downloads that Angry Birds 2 collected in the first month, the game cannot boast of crazy financial results. Its cash positions on leading markets are usually below the overall Top 40.
Dynamics of the Angry Birds 2 position in the box office iPhone App Store Overall in Russia, USA, France and Germany (App Annie)
The latter allows publications like TechCrunch to claim that layoffs occur due to the fact that Angry Birds as a franchise is no longer interesting to anyone, which, of course, is not the case.
It’s just that the company continues to try to keep up with the rapidly changing market. It’s not easy.
After the dismissal, about 410 employees will remain in the company. This is two times less than it was in 2013.
A source: http://www.rovio.com