Microsoft recently announced that it was making a 4% reduction to its global workforce. That cut hit over 9,000 employees across the company, including Xbox and the wider Microsoft Gaming divisions. 200 members of King, the studio behind mobile game Candy Crush, were impacted by the layoffs and it’s now thought they will be replaced by AI.
Sources speaking to Mobile Gamer.Biz provided the outlet with an internal memo, which gives further insight into why the layoffs occurred.
The future looks bleak
The internal memo shared by Mobile Gamer.Biz reads:
“Why is this happening?“
“The industry is changing fast, and our business has not been growing.
When that happens, we must not only look outside, at competitors and the market, but also inside.
As we’ve talked about before, we are making several changes to get the business back to growth. Unlocking many more Al tools is one recent example. Investing more in marketing this year is another.
We’re fortunate to have many talented individuals at King. But we also have a collective problem: the size and structure of the company often makes it difficult to get things done.
So we plan to simplify the organization – fewer layers, fewer overlapping remits, fewer hours spent on alignment, fewer people in meetings, fewer stakeholders for every project.
Many leaders across King have been asked to redesign their organizations to be smaller overall.
There will be some new roles created in these redesigns, and some rebalancing of headcount across King. But overall King will be a smaller company.”
Mobile Gamer.Biz continues to say that the staff let go will be “replaced by the AI tools they built and trained.” Neither Xbox nor King have responded to the report.
If AI really is the future of gaming, King won’t be the only studio being restructured to accommodate the rise of AI.
