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Just Cause developer Avalanche Studios closing UK studio in workforce restructure, following cancellation of Xbox exclusive Contraband
Game Updates

Just Cause developer Avalanche Studios closing UK studio in workforce restructure, following cancellation of Xbox exclusive Contraband

by admin September 30, 2025


Avalanche Studios is the latest developer to be impacted by layoffs, as the company’s UK studio is set to be closed as part of a workforce restructure that will impact its Swedish studios too.

The studio is known for the Just Cause series (not to be confused with Hogwarts Legacy developer Avalanche Software, owned by Warner Bros.) and was previously working on an Xbox exclusive called Contraband.

However, that project was cancelled by Microsoft back in August, with the studio writing in a statement: “Active development has now stopped while we evaluate the project’s future.”

Contraband – Official Reveal Trailer 4K | E3 2021Watch on YouTube

In a statement shared by the company today, the decision to restructure has been made “in light of current challenges to our business and the industry”.

It continued: “This review had led us to the difficult conclusion that we must make changes to our staffing and locations. As a result, we are proposing to close our Liverpool studio, and to initiate a collective consultation process, as required by UK law. This will impact all Avalanchers in Liverpool. The changes will also impact our other studio locations in Malmő and Stockholm, where we will reduce our workforce and restructure the teams to address our games’ needs.”

It concluded: “Despite these changes, we remain deeply committed to providing amazing games to our passionate player communities.” The statement does not mention Contraband and its cancellation specifically.

Contraband, a co-op smuggling game, was revealed in June 2021 at the Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase, but little of the game has been shown since. Its official trailer has been removed from the Avalanche website, though you can see IGN’s video above.

Its cancellation arrived in the wake of layoffs across Microsoft in July, which resulted in the cancellation of multiple projects including The Initiative’s Perfect Dark, Rare’s Everwild, and an unannounced ZeniMax MMO.

Microsoft CEO and chairman Satya Nadella later claimed “Microsoft is thriving”, largely due to its investments in AI.

Back in 2024, Avalanche Studios entered a collective bargaining agreement with Swedish unions, which was planned to go into effect by the second quarter of this year.

“Over the past years, we’ve taken significant steps toward making Avalanche one of the best workplaces in the games industry,” Avalanche CEO Stefanía Halldórsdóttir said at the time.



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September 30, 2025 0 comments
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Opendoor Board Chair Thinks the Company Should Cut Its Workforce by 85 Percent
Product Reviews

Opendoor Board Chair Thinks the Company Should Cut Its Workforce by 85 Percent

by admin September 14, 2025


If you work for Opendoor, the online real estate platform, you might consider polishing up your resume. The chair of the company’s board recently let it slip that he thinks the firm could stand to lose almost all of its employees.

During a recent appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street,” Keith Rabois, a former member of the PayPal Mafia, told a reporter that he felt that the majority of the people at his company were expendable. “There’s 1,400 employees at Opendoor. I don’t know what most of them do. We don’t need more than 200 of them,” Rabois remarked. He added that “the advent of AI and other technologies” made the workforce reduction a “simple problem” to solve.

Rabois’ apparent disinterest in maintaining a majority of Opendoor’s workforce is somewhat humorous given how well the company’s been doing lately. Indeed, the company’s stock is up 500 percent this year. That said, the stock performance appears to largely be the result of a wave of retail investors becoming interested in the firm due to online advice spread by a hedge fund manager. As a result, the company has been dubbed a “meme stock,” which Rabois disputes.

It’s unclear whether Rabois’s ruthless comment was just an effort to inspire confidence in the profitability of the company. After all, if you fire almost everybody at a firm, there’s a much bigger chance you’ll turn a profit.

The stock soared this week, but other developments also helped buoy investor confidence—namely, the appointment of former Shopify executive Kaz Nejatian as its new CEO. CNBC notes that “investor” pressure had spurred the exit of former Opendoor CEO Carrie Wheeler. On Thursday, the company’s stock rose a whopping 78 percent, before dipping down 13 percent on Friday, the outlet notes.

Rabois had more to say about his efforts to transform the online real estate platform: “The culture was broken,” he said, of the firm’s previous management. “These people were working remotely. That doesn’t work. This company was founded on the principle of innovation and working together in person. We’re going to return to our roots.”

Rabois also took the opportunity to dunk on the company’s diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, noting that, under its previous leadership, the firm had gone “down this DEI path,” and that Rabois intended to “fix all that.” Gizmodo reached out to Opendoor for more information about its apparent plan to upend its workforce.



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September 14, 2025 0 comments
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Eclipse Labs Cuts 65% Workforce, Appoints Sydney Huang As Ceo
Crypto Trends

Eclipse Labs Cuts 65% Workforce, Appoints Sydney Huang as CEO

by admin August 26, 2025



Eclipse Labs, the Layer 2 developer, shocked the crypto space on Monday with a sweeping leadership shakeup and heavy layoffs, cutting 65% of its workforce as it shifts toward building user-focused applications. 

Sydney Huang, known as 0xSydney, has been promoted from product lead to CEO, while outgoing chief Vijay Chetty, also known as Litquidity, has stepped down voluntarily.

Founded in 2022, Eclipse launched its Ethereum-connected rollup in November 2024. The firm is utilizing the Solana Virtual Machine. The company describes itself as “Solana on Ethereum,” combining Solana’s speed with Ethereum’s security. 

As part of the new restructuring, the firm reduced its workforce to align resources with its new strategic direction. The company also stated, “Going forward, we’ll prioritize building a breakout application on top of Eclipse’s L2 infrastructure, with more details to come.”

Today, Eclipse Labs announced team and leadership changes to align with a new direction post-TGE. Over the past months, we’ve explored opportunities for application development on the network. Going forward, we’ll prioritize building a breakout application on top of Eclipse’s L2…

— Eclipse (🐮,🌑) (@EclipseFND) August 25, 2025

The announcement follows Eclipse’s token generation event (TGE) last month, which saw the deployment of its native token, ES, on Eclipse, Ethereum, and Solana. According to CoinGecko data, the ES token has declined over 65% since the TGE, with a further 13.2% drop in the past 24 hours, trading at $0.1586 as of 10:50 p.m. ET on Monday.

Eclipse Labs Pivots to In-House App Development 

Eclipse, which has historically focused on infrastructure and developer support, is now pivoting to in-house application development to attract end users. 

Huang emphasized this shift on X, stating, “Our mission has always been to build infrastructure that can serve real-world applications. That remains unchanged, but our focus is evolving. The next chapter is about serving end users and building those applications in-house.”

Despite the layoffs, the firm affirmed its commitment to maintaining and enhancing its Layer 2 chain while allocating more resources to application development. 

Eclipse Labs’ layoffs also come after the August 25, 2025, updates about the US-based crypto exchange Coinbase’s CEO, Brian Armstrong, firing engineers who refused to adopt artificial intelligence (AI) coding tools like GitHub Copilot and Cursor. Armstrong took this initiative as the firm’s goal is to reach 50% by the end of the quarter. 

Also Read: Prediction Market Kalshi Names John Wang to Lead Crypto Vision





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August 26, 2025 0 comments
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