Online games company Goodgame Studios has revealed that it will be laying off 200 employees in order to focus on its core business. It plans to improvise its core online and mobile games such as Goodgame Empire and Big Farm.
The German company attributes this decision to the rising competition in a volatile free-to-play games industry. Last summer it had sacked some 400 employees with the same reason- to work more on its products. It seems Goodgame is ramping up the process. Till date, its games have been downloaded over 300 million times.
The company has confirmed the news and says it will be serving its global Goodgame player community and further develop its live games. Also, the management team will also be restructured. The two company founders Kai and Christian Wawrzinek will return to the top of the company as CEO and CSO. They will be in charge of the operative business.
In an article published in Gamasutra, the layoffs include employees who were hired overseas. There’s not much information on whether relocation compensation will be offered. In the e-mail sent to employees by the company, managing director Kai Wawrzinek states they have taken this decision due to the difficulty of maintaining success in the free-to-play games sector. The e-mail states,
The market for free-to-play games is highly competitive and proves more and more challenging for all market players across the industry in Germany.
The mail further says,
The industry is fighting for market shares with rapidly increasing marketing budgets, the success of new games is increasingly difficult to predict. We are also affected by these developments. At the same time, our new developments have not yielded the desired success, yet.
Among others, present CEO, Maximilian Schneider, will leave Goodgame Studios by the end of February by mutual agreement. Kai says,
The decision we took last summer, to concentrate more on our core brands – Goodgame Empire, Empire: Four Kingdoms, and Big Farm – and to place our customers at the heart of our activities, is still the right thing to do.
Moreover, he adds they will invest some million euros in our HTML5 strategy and see further chances for growth there. With shorter decision-making processes, their new, clear focus and investments in the HTML5 strategy, the foundation for the long term company success of Goodgame Studios is laid.
