Humble Games Parent Company Claims The Layoff Is Just A Restructuring, But Former Employees Say It’s A Closure Of The Studio In All But Name

On July 23, Humble Games employees took to Twitter and LinkedIn to announce that they had been laid off. All 36 members of the team entirely let go, but despite this its parent company Ziff Davis released a statement through the gutted company that this was just a “restructuring,” and that the studio wouldn’t be closed, and ongoing projects would be unaffected by these cuts.

Now, thanks to further reporting from Aftermath, we know a little more about the situation, like how while Ziff Davis calls it a restructuring, it is effectively a shut down of the company that was Humble Games, and the people who made up the publisher. Work remaining to be done for ongoing projects has been passed off to a third-party team, The Powell Group.

Aftermath also acquired a recording of the meeting where Steve Horowitz, president of technology at Ziff Davis broke the news to the Humble Games staff, citing rising costs and development delays as to why the whole of Humble Games is being let go, and The Powell Group is being brought in to finish the job.

To hear former Humble Games staff describe it though, goes a lot shorter. To sum it up, contracting The Powell Group is cheaper than 36 full-time salaries, and Ziff Davis wants a better looking financial sheet by tomorrow.

“Ziff is trying to spread the idea that it’s a restructuring to save face, but that’s a lie. No one from HG survived the layoffs, nor will they have anything to do with the game launches moving forward,” one former Humble Games staff anonymously told Aftermath.

Another chalked it down to Ziff Davis not knowing how to run a games publisher. “The business models were just incompatible with each other. Ziff is very good at owning a lot of media and increasing revenue in advertising, and Humble Games publishing was just not something that agreed with their business model. They needed money. They needed it now. They wanted to see an immediate increase in revenue after investing cash into a business, and unfortunately that’s just not how games works.”

Former Humble Games employee Chris Radley, was publicly much clearer on what is happening with this ‘restructuring.’ On LinkedIn, Radley directly calls out Ziff management, and claims the statement released earlier on the 23rd was even written by AI.

“I want it to be made abundantly clear, this is NOT a restructuring of operations. This is a total shutdown of #HumbleGames. Operations have been handed off to a third party consultancy. NO staff are left.

DO NOT believe this AI message written by the parent company of Humble Games, Ziff Davis, who are trying to mitigate pushback. This was ONCE AGAIN a failure of leadership across the board, and once again hard working talented staff are paying the cost for their poor decisions. Every ex-employee is being gaslit by this narrative and its so disrespectful.“

Another former Humble Games employees echoed the same sentiment, that Ziff Davis was simply incapable of understanding what’s needed to run a games publisher.

“Ziff Davis does not understand the world of game development – and the principle that when you invest money, a game is not released in six months but takes time to be done – and were starting to not like this when they understood its workings, so with their stock going down, they simply decided they did not want to be in that business anymore.

Their decision was not rational and will really hurt indie development in the long run, on top of their employees and the project in development.”

The mass layoffs that have plagued the games industry in the last few years have consistently been upsetting to see, especially when at the heart of so many of them lies a series of managerial mishaps that the employees, not the management, pay for with their jobs.

It’s not entirely surprising to see these former employees point to the same thing here, but you’d expect Ziff Davis, the parent company that owns IGN, Eurogamer, GamesIndustry.Biz, VG247, Rock Paper Shotgun and PCMag might read some of the work its publications produce, and be able to gleam the simple truth that there’s no easy and impatient path to success in the games industry.

Hopefully those impacted by the Humble Games layoffs will be able to land on their feet.

Source – [Aftermath]