Another game development studio has joined an increasing list of companies that have been hit with layoffs in 2024. Deck Nine Games, developer of Life is Strange: True Colors, has announced that it’s laying off 20 percent of its total workforce. An IGN report states the studio employed 100-130 employes, which means over 20 people are set to face job cuts.
The studio announced the same in an update on Twitter, saying, “Like many others in the games industry right now, Deck Nine has been affected by the game industry’s worsening market conditions. Today we made the difficult decision to lay off 20% of our staff. These people are amazing, talented, and awesome developers. They have made a huge impact during their time at Deck Nine Games and we did not take this decision lightly.”
Interestingly, Stephan Frost, game director at Deck Nine Games, revealed on Twitter that the studio’s leadership also took pay cuts to minimize layoffs as much as possible. “Leadership took pay cuts to keep the number down as much as possible,” he wrote. “This is the strongest team Deck Nine has ever been and it absolutely sucks that the industry is in the state that it is presently.”
Deck Nine is best known for its 2021 title Life is Strange: True Colors, prior to which it also developed 2017’s Life is Strange: Before the Storm. Last year, the studio released The Expanse: A Telltale Series, which it co-developed with Telltale Games (which also suffered layoffs last year).
This is the second time Deck Nine has been hit with layoffs in less than a year, with an undisclosed number of employees also having been laid off in May of last year.
Two months in, 2024 has already been a brutal year for the games industry, with widespread layoffs having resulted in thousands of job cuts, already eclipsing 2023’s already-devastating numbers.
Most recently, Sony Interactive Entertainment announced that it was laying off about 900 people, with studios like Naughty Dog, Insomniac Games, Guerrilla, and Firesprite set to be impacted. Meanwhile, SIE London Studio is being closed down entirely, while number of first-party PlayStation titles have also been cancelled, including (according to reports) the rumoured Twisted Metal reboot. Guerrilla’s multiplayer Horizon game seems to have survived the culling though.