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layoffs

Yooka-Laylee studio Playtonic confirms layoffs

by admin May 31, 2025

Playtonic, the developer behind the Yooka-Laylee series, has confirmed layoffs at the studio.

In a statement shared on social media, the studio stated it has “felt the knock-on effects” of recent changes in the industry and so, “after exploring every possible avenue” it has made “the incredibly heartbreaking decision to say goodbye to some truly brilliant members of the Playtonic team”.

It’s unclear if Playtonic’s next game, the remaster Yooka-Replaylee, has been affected. It’s set for release later this year.

Yooka-Replaylee | Console Announcement Trailer!Watch on YouTube

“This isn’t a reflection of anyone’s talent or dedication, the people leaving have poured so much heart, creativity, and care into everything we do. They’ve helped shape our studio, our games, and our culture, and we’re incredibly proud of what we’ve built together.”

The studio surmised: “This isn’t simply a difficult moment, it’s a period of profound change in how games are created and financed. The landscape is shifting, and with it, so must we.”

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— Playtonic (@playtonicgames.com) 30 May 2025 at 13:32

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According to a LinkedIn post from Playtonic brand manager Anni Valkama, layoffs have impacted the production, art, game design, narrative design, and UI/UX design teams. Others affected have shared posts on LinkedIn over the past couple of weeks.

Kevin Bayliss, who designed Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong for Rare’s Donkey Kong Country games on SNES and now works as an artist at Playtonic, also shared his thoughts. “I love working in the games industry, but it’s been a sad couple of weeks for us at Playtonic Ltd since we’ve lost some great talent and friends due to redundancies,” he wrote. “I feel extremely lucky to still have a position doing what I enjoy, but also very lucky to have had the pleasure of meeting and working with the lovely people that we’ve had to say goodbye to.”

Yooka-Laylee, released back in 2017, was seen as a spiritual successor to Banjo Kazooie, inspired by 90s 3D platformers. It was followed by a side-scrolling sequel, Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair two years later.

In 2021, Playtonic announced its publishing label Playtonic Friends.

Yooka-Replaylee is aiming to launch across PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC with revised graphics, overhauled animations, and new challenges. Its trailer includes a Nintendo logo, suggesting it’s headed to Switch 2 too.

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May 31, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

Yooka-Laylee developer Playtonic confirms layoffs: ‘The landscape is shifting, and with it, so must we’

by admin May 30, 2025

Yooka-Laylee developer Playtonic Games has laid off an undisclosed number of employees, confirming reports of cuts shared by former employees on social media over the past week.

“We’ve all seen in recent years how the games industry has been changing, resulting in studio and studio finding themselves in situations where to continue to exist, they must make painful decisions—decisions that impact the lives of so many individual talented developers,” Playtonic said in today’s statement. “Like others, we’ve felt the knock-on effects and after exploring every possible avenue, we’ve had to make the incredibly heartbreaking decision to say goodbye to some truly brilliant members of the Playtonic team.

“This isn’t simply a difficult moment, it’s a period of profound change in how games are created and financed. The landscape is shifting, and with it, so must we.”

Yooka-Laylee developers Playtonic announce layoffs: “the landscape is shifting, and with it, so must we”

by admin May 30, 2025

Yooka-Laylee developers Playtonic are laying off staff across their operations, as they wrestle with what they call “a period of profound change in how games are created and financed”. It’s not clear what these “profound changes” are, exactly – soaring budgets? Evergreen service games drinking up all the oxygen? Falling interest in the genre of mascot platformer Playtonic are best known for? Either way, the outcome is that a bunch of artists, game designers, narrative designers, producers and UI or UX people are now looking for work.

“We’ve all seen in recent years how the games industry has been changing, resulting in studio after studio finding themselves in situations where to continue to exist, they must make painful decisions – decisions that impact the lives of so many individual talented developers,” reads a statement on social media. “This isn’t a reflection of anyone’s talent or dedication, the people leaving have poured so much heart, creativity, and care into everything we do.”

Playtonic brand manager Anni Valkama has shared a list of departing staff on LinkedIn. “Whether you are hiring yourself, your company is hiring or you know someone that is hiring, these are some of the best artists, designers, producers, and writer[s] you could have on your team,” she wrote.

In their social media statement, Playtonic further comment that “this isn’t simply a difficult moment” and that “the landscape is shifting, and with it, so must we.” All of which is slightly more sensitively worded than say, Microsoft’s “aligning” 1900 jobs into the sun, or Take-Two’s “rationalizing” away livelihoods by the fistful, but doesn’t answer many questions.

Playtonic were founded in 2014 by former members of Rare. Their first game, a dual-character hop’n’bopper, harkened back convincingly to the glory days of Banjo Kazooie, but didn’t set my world alight as a reviewer. Their subsequent 2.5D Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair found a warmer reception, however, and in 2021 they launched a publishing division, Playtonic Friends, partnering with projects such as Demon Tides and BPM: Bullets Per Minute. Tencent bought a minority stake in Playtonic later that year.

2020-2021 was a boom period for the games industry at large, thanks to a whole lot of us playing games at home during the pandemic lockdowns. Many publishers expanded to meet the demand, and were left up the creek when the lockdowns ended and the cash ceased to flow in sufficient quantities for their investors. This, at least, is the increasingly worn-out elevator summary I woozily mutter to myself as I try to scroll to the bottom of our layoffs feed. I’d like Playtonic to say more about why these layoffs were necessary.

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May 30, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Black Panther game reportedly canned as EA closes Cliffhanger Games, resulting in an unspecified amount of layoffs and role switches

by admin May 29, 2025

EA’s decided to go back to the cutting well. Its execs have decided to cancel a Black Panther game that was in the works at Cliffhanger Games, and close the studio for good measure. An unspecified number of people will lose their jons or have to transition to other roles within EA as a result.

This is according to a report from IGN, which cites an email from EA Entertainment president Laura Miele about these latest cuts as having said that they’re part of the publisher’s ongoing efforts to “sharpen our focus” and go hard on “the most significant growth opportunities”. Yep, it’s 2025, and a liscenced Marvel tie-in revolving around a popular movie franchise apparently isn’t a good opportunity to make money.

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EA hasn’t confirmed the number of staff affected by Cliffhanger’s closure and some layoffs to its mobile and central teams it’s enacting at the same time, with IGN understanding that less people will be hit than the roughly 300 impacted by the layoffs the publisher enacted just last month.

That last round, in case you’ve lost track of EA’s wanton self-destruction by this point, involved staff at respawn and came with the news that an in-development Titanfall game had been consigned to the scrapheap.

“These decisions are hard,” Miele wrote in the email, “They affect people we’ve worked with, learned from, and shared real moments with. We’re doing everything we can to support them — including finding opportunities within EA, where we’ve had success helping people land in new roles.”

We’d not seen anything of this Black Panther game from Cliffhanger following its announcement back in 2023. That announcement revealed that it’d be a third-person, single-player thing featuring “an expansive and reactive world that empowers players to experience what it is like to take on the mantle of Wakanda’s protector, the Black Panther”. In 2024, a job listing hinted that world could be an open one.

So, it’s impossible to say if it’d have been a good, bad, or just decent game had it gone the distance. But, like, what are we doing here if even games like this don’t get the chance to make it to an end result? Miele said that EA plans to continue to put cash into Motive’s Iron Man game and the next Star Wars: Jedi game from Respawn.

Aside from that though, the publisher’s continued move away from liscenced titles looks to be seeing it pretty much circle the wagons around Battlefield, The Sims, Skate, Apex Legends, and the Mass Effect game what’s left of BioWare is now working on.

After all, why bother giving yourself lots of chances to make money, when you can put all of your eggs into an increasingly dwindling basket and desperately pray that nothing ever goes wrong with any of them?

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May 29, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

EA’s Black Panther game reportedly cancelled and studio closed, resulting in more layoffs

by admin May 29, 2025

EA has reportedly cancelled its single-player Black Panther game and closed the studio behind it, resulting in an unspecified number of layoffs.

EA Entertainment president Laura Miele shared the news in an email to staff seen by IGN, insisting today’s Black Panther cancellation, the closure of Cliffhanger Games, and the resulting job losses – as well the recent cancellation of other projects, including an unannounced Titanfall game at Respawn – would help the publisher “sharpen our focus and put our creative energy behind the most significant growth opportunities.”

EA declined to comment on the number of employees impacted by its latest round of layoffs when approached by IGN (these will reportedly also affect members of the publisher’s mobile and central divisions), but the website says it understands fewer individuals will be affected compared to the 300 job cuts recently made across Respawn and several other teams.

“These decisions are hard,” Miele wrote. “They affect people we’ve worked with, learned from, and shared real moments with. We’re doing everything we can to support them – including finding opportunities within EA, where we’ve had success helping people land in new roles.”

EA announced its Black Panther title back in 2023, confirming it would be handled by its then-new Cliffhanger Games studio in collaboration with Marvel Games. Although few details were shared at the time, it was described as a third-person title set in an “expansive and reactive” version of Wakanda, and still “early in development”. Nothing has been seen of the project since then, but a job listing in 2024 indicated it would be an open-world game.

Black Panther’s cancellation follows EA CEO Andrew Wilson’s comments last year that the publisher would be moving away from “future licensed IP”. And while Miele insisted EA will continue to invest in developer Motive’s Iron Man project and Respawn’s third Star Wars: Jedi game, she suggested the focus will now be on a small number of its own franchises, specifically Battlefield, The Sims, Skate, and Apex Legends. That’s in addition to Bioware’s next Mass Effect.

Notably, EA also recently announced it was ending its licensing partnership with the World Rally Championship and “pausing development” on all future rally games – a move which resulted in an undisclosed number of additional layoffs at Codemasters.

A second Black Panther project – publisher Skydance Games’ Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra, which is being penned by Uncharted writer Amy Hennig – was recently delayed into next year.

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May 29, 2025 0 comments