July 2024 would have been a fairly quiet period in terms of layoffs in the games industry, especially if Bungie hadn’t announced mass job cuts on the last day of the month.
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At least 368 games industry professionals lost their jobs last month, according to the Game Industry Layoffs project. Below are the largest layoffs that occurred in July 2024:
- Bungie — 220 employees, the company also announced a restructuring (155 devs will be integrated into SIE, and one unannounced game will be transferred to a newly formed PlayStation studio);
- NetherRealm Studios — 50 employees, the Mortal Kombat developer reportedly closed its mobile division (neither NetherRealm nor Warner Bros. Discovery commented on the news);
- Humble Games — 36 employees, some former workers insist that the publisher was shut down completely (the company itself denied the reports of its closure despite laying off the entire staff);
- Rumble Games — 35 employees, the mobile developer behind games like KingsRoad and Alliance: Heroes of the Spire closed its doors after 13 years;
- Wicked Games — 15 employees, the studio closed after two years without being able to release its debut game, creature-collecting MMO Spherix.
Other studio affected by the layoffs last month include Surgent Studios (Tales of Kenzera: ZAU) and Splash Damage (Brink, Gears Tactics, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars).
It is worth noting that Game Industry Layoffs doesn’t include all the job cuts, so the total is likely larger. For example, German developer Flying Sheep Studios closed after 10 years. Known for making HTML5 games, the studio employed around 80 people.
Game companies cut at least 11,400 jobs since the beginning of the year. Most layoffs occurred in January (6,000+), followed by February (2,000+), April (1,000+), May (773), and June (632). The largest cuts were made by Microsoft (2,150 people), Unity (1,800), and Sony Interactive Entertainment (900).