Mobile publisher Playtika is laying off over 600 workers and pulling multiple projects from its release slate.
The Israel-based company confirmed the news to mobilegamer.biz, and said it will be “balancing teams and redeploying talent” in pursuit of greater efficiency.
The layoffs represent around 15 percent of Playtika’s total workforce, and according to company CEO Robert Antokol are being made after “intense deliberation.”
“As we assess the current environment and look toward the future, Playtika must return to our roots of excellence through agility, efficiency, creativity and being obsessed with winning to deliver the most fun forms of mobile entertainment to our players,” wrote Antokol in an email to employees, which was then shared with mobilegamer.biz by Playtika.
“We will begin achieving this by balancing teams and redeploying talent, winding down non-core initiatives and consolidating studios for greater efficiency and a stronger focus on optimization. Evaluation of new game concepts will be centralized through our creative team at Wooga, and three current titles have been removed from the pipeline with priority toward strategic high-growth potential new games investments.”
Antokol added that employees affected by the job cuts will be able to take part in one-to-one conversations with their managers and offered support—although it’s unclear exactly what sort of help they’ll be given.
This isn’t the first time Playtika has reduced its headcount this year, with the company shuttering Best Fiends developer Seriously back in October and handing the keys to the popular title to development teams in Poland and Israel.
The layoffs also come just weeks after Playtika sunk $25 million into Turkish casual game studio Ace Games, best known for working on free-to-play mobile title Fiona’s Farm. Prior to that, private equity firm Joffre Capital bought a majority stake in Playtika for $2.2 billion.