Mobile videogames developer Niantic has announced it will be laying off 230 employees and ceasing production on a number of its upcoming games.
The video game maker announced that a reorganisation of the company means that its Los Angeles studio will be closed.
Go deeper with GlobalData
The news comes just one year after the US-based company announced layoffs for 90 of its employees.
Niantic announced the cancellation of its upcoming Marvel game, as well as the closing of its NBA All-World game, which spent just four months in the App Store.
Niantic had a smash hit in 2016 with Pokemon Go, reaching a peak of 232m active players in the year of its debut.
Since then, the phone gaming market has changed considerably, with Apple and Google’s app stores preventing advertising tracking. This has made it harder and more expensive for developers to attract new users.
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By GlobalDataJohn Hanke, Niantic CEO, said in a statement: “In the years since Pokémon GO’s launch, the mobile market has become crowded and changes to the app store and the mobile advertising landscape have made it increasingly hard to launch new mobile games at scale.
The CEO said the layoffs came at a time of global macroeconomic slowdown, as well as other “internal and external factors”.
“In the wake of the revenue surge we saw during Covid, we grew our headcount and related expenses in order to pursue growth more aggressively,” Hanke said.
Pokemon Go, which has continued to hold a healthy user base, will remain the company’s “top priority” it said on Thursday (30 June).
The news comes as global investment in the gaming industry plummeted in 2022, according to research firm GlobalData.
Last year saw investment in the industry total $24.2bn, a substantial decline from 2021 which totalled $73.4bn.
This was built upon growth in 2020, which saw total investment of $56.9bn as Covid-19 lockdowns brought more players into the space.
The research firm predicts the gaming industry will be worth $470bn by the end of the decade.
