Iron Galaxy lays off a large chunk of employees as a ‘last effort’ to ensure studio survival

The developers behind Killer Instinct and Rumbleverse, Iron Galaxy, parted ways with 66 employees in the development and support owing to current situations. This decision, as per the studio, was taken to ensure the survival following multiple actions to keep the team intact which wasn’t enough and further added to industrywide layoffs this year.

“Today, Iron Galaxy is parting ways with some of our developers and support staff. In total, we have reduced our employee base by 66 people. This was a means of last resort for us. It’s a measure we do not take lightly to enable our long-term survival,” the studio wrote in an official statement.

This comes on the back of multiple misses by the developer across various releases. Founded back in 2008, Iron Galaxy started with original IPs, sadly, most of them did not hit the mark. The most recent creation from the studio was Rumbleverse, a battle royale game, which also did not survive long and was taken offline within a year of release.

Iron Galaxy plans to work as a support studio for game development

Apart from original IPs, Iron Galaxy also boasts a long list of games where they worked as a support studio and ported some popular games like The Last of Us Part series for PC, Apex Legends for the Nintendo Switch, and more.

Despite the unfortunate news, the studio still plans to work as a support studio. “Our capabilities remain intact to work with the best companies in the world on the most beloved player experiences. This year, we’ll continue to explore new ways to support an industry we love and keep working towards its ongoing recovery,” the statement further added.

Also Read:GDC report for game industry reveals 1 out of 10 game dev were laid off in 2024

What is the reason behind this industrywide layoffs?

Despite a surge in the popularity of video games, companies are cutting jobs and shuttering studios. It’s been only a month and 2025 is already watching some top gaming companies like Microsoft, BioWare, Ubisoft, and others lower their headcount.

The main reason behind this is the increasing development costs of video games which are getting extremely hard to recoup due to the volatile nature of the game industry. A single flop or underperformance can result is mass layoffs among game studios.