Dreams and LittleBigPlanet developer Media Molecule is to lay off 15-20% of its staff, according to a new report.
Sports Illustrated‘s GLHF says the studio held an internal meeting today and told staff that it planned to lay off around 20 of its 135 employees.
The news comes a month after Media Molecule ended support for Dreams, which was released in early access in April 2019 before officially launching in February 2020.
Update – Layoffs confirmed
Media Molecule has confirmed the layoffs:
In an article posted on the game’s official website earlier this year, the studio explained it had “made the difficult decision to discontinue live support for Dreams after September 1, 2023 to shift our focus to an exciting new project”.
Players are still able to play, create and share content on the game, but it will be receiving no further updates. Players also now have a 5GB storage limit for any new creations.
The Media Molecule layoffs are the latest in a long string of mass layoffs taking place across the games industry this year.
Earlier this month it was reported that Telltale Games laid off a number of employees, and that Team17 is planning “significant” job losses as part of a company restructure. Last month it was announced that Epic Games would be laying off 16% of its staff, consisting of “around 830 employees”.
Earlier this year Microsoft confirmed plans to lay off approximately 10,000 employees, including some at Xbox and Bethesda.
CD Projekt Red also announced plans in July to lay off around 10% of its staff, with CD Projekt CEO Adam Kiciński stating that the company wants to have “teams that are more agile and more effective”.
Layoffs have also recently been occurring at a number of other companies, including Unity, Riot Games, Blizzard, Crystal Dynamics, Bioware and The Callisto Protocol studio Striking Distance.
