Only buying video game sequels? That may have cost someone their job.
Digital Bros, the parent company of publisher 505 Games (Control Ultimate Edition, Death Stranding Director’s Cut), has shared a press release explaining how it’s planning to fire a pretty big chunk of its global workforce following an organizational review of its existing projects—30%, to be exact.
According to the Italian company, which operates under the tagline “life is more fun if you play video games,” much of this is owed to consumers leaning toward sequels rather than original games these days, a change that has led the company to review, and, apparently, wind down some of its projects.
Here’s what Digital Bros had to say, with some of the blame being placed on COVID-19:
The videogame market has evolved since the pandemic to be more selective in terms of new games, with consumers increasingly reverting to well established Intellectual Properties and playing these same games for longer periods. Digital Bros strategy has had to adapt to this new and evolving competitive scenario and will focus its efforts moving forward on the release of sequels and new versions of previously successful and established games, with a limited number of new larger budgets productions.
In order to prioritize high-quality and long-standing successful titles, Digital Bros has reconsidered the number of projects under development and as such, will review the organization structure accordingly to align with the evolving competitive environment in the medium to long-term to ensure maximum operational efficiency.
And while this probably isn’t helpful for those who are being fired, Digital Bros did assure investors that the company should be seeing a consistent fiscal year:
Digital Bros management believes that this program will not impact the expected Profit and Loss statement for FY 2023-2024, with no significant effect of the restructuring costs on the annual projected results, due to the savings resulting from reduced payroll costs.
505 Games’ most recent publishing project is Ghostrunner 2, the new sequel from One More Level that launched in October 2023.
The company announced last week that it would also be publishing Death Stranding Director’s Cut for Apple iPhone and iPad devices.