Unofficially, tinyBuild could have carried out a major optimization last week. The company has fired at least a dozen people.
Bookwalker: Thief of Tales
UPDATE (from 19:58, 04.12.2023)
Mikhail Kuzmin, marketing director of tinyBuild, noted in a closed chat of the podcast "How games are made" (the editorial board received permission to use a comment from Mikhail) that the founder of the company Alex Nichiporchik will make an official statement about the situation tomorrow, December fifth. In the same place, Mikhail noted that:
- "all dismissals are clearly in accordance with the legislation of the countries where employees are located, including good cash payments";
- the current situation is a very "difficult decision".
THE ORIGINAL NEWS
The Telegram channel "Gamedev, which we deserve" was the first to write about it. A post appeared in it, according to which:
- the layoffs affected those tinyBuild studios located in Serbia;
- the cuts varied from studio to studio (somewhere 10% of employees were fired, somewhere 30%);
- layoffs took place in one day (there was a one-on-one call, then the corporate account was blocked);
- conditions worsened for those employees who remained (for example, the company stopped paying for Serbian language courses).
According to Linkedin, last week, indeed, many employees of the company were out of work. At least a dozen resumes have an Open to work tag and/or a post stating that an employee is looking for a new job.
However, judging by Linkedin again, the layoffs affected not only Serbian studios (that is, those that were relocated to the country from the CIS in the last two years). The Dutch office could also run into them.
There is no information about the cuts on tinyBuild's website or on its social networks, nor is it in the company's database for investors. According to tinyBuild's official website, there are no open vacancies in the company today.
Recall that, according to the results of the first half of 2023, tinyBuild was in the red. Its operating loss was $31.9 million. Adjusted EBITDA (the company's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) also turned out to be negative — minus $1.2 million.
The company noted at the time that the results were "below expectations" due to "a sharp drop in revenue from service development and poor Versus Evil results." Against the backdrop of a bad half-year, its shares fell by 79%.
It was also noted that one of the reasons for the fall is the difficult situation in the gaming market. Platforms have become much less invested in AAA games. Transactions with them have been an important driver of tinyBuild's growth in recent years.
Even then, the company warned that it would not rule out the possibility of reorganization.
In terms of releases, 2023 was a very busy year for the company. She has published at least 13 products, including titles such as The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales, Punch Club 2: Fast Forward, I Am Future and Black Skylands.