Ascendant Studios lays off nearly half of its staff after 'Immortals of Aveum' flops

Ascendant Studios

Ascendant Studios, the developer behind Immortals of Aveum, a first-person shooter with magic elements, has announced that it is cutting almost half its staff. The layoffs come just weeks after the game’s launch. In a post on X (formerly Twitter), CEO Bret Robbins said that the company had to make this “painfully difficult, but necessary” decision that would affect around 45 percent of its workers (about 40 people). He added that Ascendant would provide severance packages and job placement assistance to those who were let go. The remaining employees will keep working on the game for now.

Immortals of Aveum is the debut title from Ascendant, an independent studio that boasts veteran developers in its ranks. However, the game faced stiff competition from other major releases. Publisher EA did not choose an optimal launch window either.

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Shopify is 20 percent smaller

Photo: Shopify

Shopify is downsizing further. This time, it cuts around 20 percent of its 11,600 workforce as the company sells Shopify Logistics to Flexport. The company's CEO Tobi Lutke goes into detail about the changes in this blog post. Last year, the company laid off around 1,000 employees.

Meta's 2023 layoffs may match the scope of last year's

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg refers to 2023 as the "year of efficiency," and part of that means more layoffs. The first wave of cuts is expected to be announced next week, with non-engineering roles being hit hard. The company is expected to shut down projects and teams in conjunction with these job cuts. Facebook's parent company is expected to do multiple layoff rounds over the coming months, resulting in another 13% cut of its workforce.

Last year, Meta cut approximately 11,000 jobs or around 13% of its employees. Among the projects expected to get axed include wearable devices in the works at its Reality Labs (Meta's hardware and metaverse division).

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Spotify expected to layoff employees as soon as this week

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Spotify is the latest tech company expected to layoff employees as soon as this week. It isn't known how many of its 9,800 employees will be affected, but the company is reportedly moving forward with the plan to reduce operational expenses. This layoff is expected to be more broad than previous round of cuts in October, which affected staff working on canceled shows from its in-house podcast studios Gimlet and Parcast.

The streaming service has declined to comment on this report. But Spotify executives have previously signaled plans to reduce headcount-related expenses. CEO Daniel Ek told staff in June the company planned to reduce its hiring growth by 25 percent. CFO Paul Vogel also pointed to “increasing uncertainty regarding the global economy” during Spotify's investor day in June as a reason to evaluate its "headcount growth in the near term." The company is expected to report its fourth-quarter earnings on January 31.

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