Developer Crystal Dynamics has announced that it has been hit by a new round of lay-offs. In a post on LinkedIn, the company confirmed that these lay-offs affect just under 30 of its employees across its departments and different projects. The company has said that the lay-offs happened due to the evolving realities of the gaming industry, which in turn have led the company to making “these painful choices” to ensure the continued development of Tomb Raider.
“Today we’ve made the difficult but necessary decision to reorganize Crystal Dynamics’ studios and teams,” wrote the studio in its announcement. “As a result, we’ve parted ways with just under 30 team members across various departments and projects as we restructure the company and business for our next generation.”
The company has made it clear, however, that it is not stopping work on its next Tomb Raider game. In the announcement of these lay-offs, Crystal Dynamics noted that the restructuring will also help its sustainability for future projects.
“To our players – as the realities of the industry continue to evolve, we’ve made these painful choices as a way to optimize the continued development of our flagship Tomb Raider game, as well as shaping the rest of the studio to make new games for the future.”
Interestingly, Crystal Dynamics and its Tomb Raider project was recently mentioned in the reports about Amazon undergoing massive lay-offs affecting more than 14,000 of its employees. As part of these lay-offs, the tech giant had announced that it would be shutting down games like New World: Aeternum and would focus more on “casual and AI-focused games”. At the time, however, it had also noted that work on the Tomb Raider project would be continuing.
This is far from the first time Crystal Dynamics has been in the headlines because of lay-offs this year. The studio had also gone through lay-offs back in August where it let go of an undisclosed number of its employees. The studio said at the time that these lay-offs would not affect the development of its Tomb Raider project.
Later reports indicated that these lay-offs came about due to a deal falling through that would have ended up with Crystal Dynamics working on the Perfect Dark reboot, which was cancelled earlier this year. The deal, according to the report, involved Embracer Group buying the Perfect Dark IP from Microsoft and then selling it to Take-Two Interactive, who would then finance the development of the Perfect Dark game.
Crystal Dynamics had also gone through a round of lay-offs all the way back in March, where 17 of its employees had been affected. Much like this time around, the studio had said that the lay-offs were “necessary to better align our current business needs and the studio’s future success. It is not a reflection of the dedication or ability of those affected.”
While 2025 has certainly been quite a rough year for Crystal Dynamics, the company hasn’t yet revealed any details about its upcoming Tomb Raider project.
