49 people will be fired from the company, another 70 will be transferred to Seattle, said Big Fish executive director and founder Paul Thelen in a letter to colleagues.
The closure of the office is primarily due to the rejection of the cloud service, which was supposed to become a single ecosystem for all the company’s products. It was planned that its users would be able to play Big Fish projects from any device.
The idea, according to Paul, did not inspire users: “the service is not growing as fast as we expected, and it does not pay for itself.” He also added that “the cost of supporting cloud delivery of premium games is too high, and the level of penetration into the user audience is too low for its further financing.”
The rejection of the cloud service coincided with the departure from the company of its president Dave Stephenson (Dave Stephenson), his place was taken by John Holland (John Holland).
Otherwise, everything is fine in Big Fish, Telen assured. This year will be a record revenue in the history of the company. He also noted that Big Fish continues to generate revenue. The most dynamically developing segment of the company’s business is gambling and casual free-to-play.
Source: gamesindustry.biz