Ziff Davis' Amazing Adventures At Fucking Everything Up
36 employees at Humble Games were laid off in "restructuring"(sic) [citation needed]
By Red Savarin! | July 25th, 2024
As reported by Aftermath and PCGamer, Humble Games, an indie publisher of titles such as Signalis and Slay The Spire, has recently had all of it's employees laid off by it's parent company, Ziff Davis. In a statement worded in the most corpospeak way possible on the official Humble Games Twitter account, this massive lay-off was due to them seeing it as a "[...]difficult but necessary decision to restructure our operations".
"We are acutely aware of the profound impact this decision has on our team members at Humble Games and deeply empathize with everyone affected." the unempathetical corpospeak- I mean, totally official tweet not posted by a social media manager goes onto say.
According to the afforementioned report by Aftermath, however, it was stated by Steve Horowitz, the president of the technology and shipping division of parent company Ziff Davis, that the company would be sold off to a third-party called The Powell Group who will take over the remaining unfinished projects published by Humble Games. It really doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that this so-called "restructuring" is nothing more than an excuse to sell the entire company. Hell, it was stated in an article by GamesRadar that Ziff Davis had tried (and failed) to sell the company two seperate times before vouching for the nuclear option by laying everyone off.
Multiple employees have posted their condolences and messages on their Linkedin profiles about the lay-offs, including the former Creative Lead at Humble Bundle, Chris Radley who left the company in 2022. Radley stated that
"Operations have been handed off to a third party consultancy. NO staff are left,"
This isn't the first time that this has happened and it sadly won't be the last, as it's part of the more-than-concerning wave of industry layoffs that have been going on for years now. As the corporate train keeps rolling down the tracks and raking in cash, it will continue to grind it's employees and creatives to the bone with it's profits-first mindset before inevitably dumping them off on the side of the tracks to their fate. I hope all of those who were effected by these lay-offs are able to recover and are able to find work elsewhere.
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