Ubisoft laid off dozens of employees in Toronto, Steam set a new concurrent user record during its summer sale, Helldivers 2 lost 90% of its audience on Steam — here's what happened in the gaming industry over the weekend.
Helldivers 2
- Ubisoft conducted mass layoffs at Ubisoft Toronto — the division involved in the development of the remakes of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Splinter Cell. A total of 33 people lost their jobs. In a statement to the media, the company explained that the layoffs were part of targeted restructuring necessary for the Canadian studio to achieve its ambitious plans.
- On June 30, Steam attracted a record number of concurrent users. According to data from SteamDB, the platform reached 36.9 million users. This milestone was achieved thanks to the recently launched summer sale, during which many games in the Steam catalog received significant discounts. The previous record of 36.35 million users was set on March 17 — also during a sale.
- Five months after its release, the Steam version of Helldivers 2 has seen a significant drop in its audience, Forbes noted. In February, over 458,000 people were playing the co-op shooter simultaneously, but now the daily concurrent users hover around 44,000. This means the audience has shrunk by 90%. The status of Helldivers 2's player base on PlayStation remains unknown. However, Forbes reports that the game has long since fallen out of the top 10 most popular games on Sony consoles, giving way to long-established hits like Fortnite, Call of Duty, GTA Online, and Roblox.
- The creators of the toy soldier shooter Hypercharge: Unboxed announced that the game's sales have exceeded 100,000 copies. It reached this milestone a month after its release on Xbox. In addition to Xbox, the shooter is also available on PC and Nintendo Switch.