Jurassic World Alive, Cookie Jam developer sees massive layoffs

Jurassic World Alive Harry Potter Mystery at HogwartsJam City, the publisher of this publication, laid off 17% staff from its company and its subsidiary Ludia. Workers said that Ludia in Montreal, which is known for its original and branded creations, had previously employed approximately 400 people. Jam City was the creator of match-3 games. Cookie JamIn 2014, the company had approximately 1,000 employees.

Jam City workers and Ludia workers lost around 200 jobs on Thursday. Polygon talked to 10 Ludia employees and two other current workers. Multiple former employees at Ludia told Polygon they were either on leave or vacation while laid off, finding out first from other coworkers and then noticing they’d lost access to associated accounts.

Ludia workers were NotAccording to Polygon, the first way laid-off workers were notified was via large meetings. Employees were told not to share the information with others. Human resources began to pull the affected individuals into separate meetings later. Polygon was told by at least one worker that they had started to lose access their work accounts when they were waiting for their meeting. Others became confused and began to question the public Slack room layoffs.

The majority of workers said they were surprised by the layoffs, noting they’d been promised previously that it wouldn’t happen — that the Jam City acquisition would let Ludia do more of what it already does. “People are really upset,” one current employee told Polygon. “Ludia’s treated us very well over the years. They’ve done a lot to try to take care of us, but since the acquisition, that attitude seems to be changing. We’ve tried to have our voices heard, but we’ve, in general, seemed to be ignored. We feel voiceless.”

After securing funding of $350M from South Korean gaming company Netmarble in September 2021, Jam City bought Ludia at $165 Million. MarvelRealm of ChampionsVentureBeat says Kabam is a developer. Four ex-employees told Polygon Jam City had issued smaller rounds of layoffs in the time period. Thursday’s layoff, however, is by far the largest of them all.

A Jam City spokesperson told Polygon that the decision was made “in light of the challenging global economy and its impact on the gaming industry.” The spokesperson continued:

Jam City made the hard decision to cut our staff by 17 percent due to the global economic challenges and the impact it has had on the gaming sector. Jam City has made several strategic acquisitions in recent years. The move is a correct sizing decision to reduce our staff by about 17 percent, as this will address the redundancies that have occurred from those transactions. Jam City continues to be profitable. We believe this is necessary in order to increase our financial flexibility as well as improve operating efficiency, and position Jam City better for long-term growth. We also recently completed a larger restructuring to realign development teams into genre divisions that are focused on specific subject matter expertise in order to maximize performance. To help the transition, we offer severance benefits and compensation to those who have left us.

They claimed that workers were offered severance benefits which increase based on their time with the company.

Jam City announced its next video game. Ascension Champions In a May white paper, the company will announce that it is building on blockchain technology. Ascension ChampionsOpenSea currently allows characters to be bought as NFTs; there are 7,622 available at the time of writing. Some of the laid-off workers speculated to Polygon that Jam City’s all-in approach to blockchain gaming may have influenced the layoffs Thursday. Other than that, Ascension ChampionsJam City is a developer of a variety of original and licensed games like Genies & Gems, Disney Emoji BlitzAnd Family Guy: Another Freakin’ Mobile Game.

Ludia began as a licensing company for games, such as “Ludia”, which it founded in 2007. You Pay the Right PriceOther game show brands as well as games such as Videogame The Bachelor Jurassic World Alive.

“The problem that comes with a lot of game development is that we have so much nondisclosure,” one worker said. “It’s difficult for these things to get out without feeling like you’re at risk. If you’re able to speak out about these sorts of layoffs, let people know this is happening. It will go unnoticed. The game development industry is simply going about its business. But in a city like Montreal, where there’s such a concentrated number of studios, it can be devastating.”