Days after showcasing several games at the Summer Game Fest showcase, the Sumo Group announced that it would lay off up to 15% of its entire workforce "to ensure the stability of our business going forward."

"While Sumo has been able to weather many of the recent difficulties facing the gaming industry, we are not immune and restructuring our overall operations to better weather the upcoming challenges expected in the coming months is This is the path we must now take to ensure the stability of our business going forward," the company said in a statement. [The difficult decision to reduce costs across the business in a number of ways is a direct result of these challenges, which unfortunately will include reducing the number of employees the business can support. We are considering all alternatives to limit the impact on our employees, but sadly, this transformation process will affect up to 15% of our group-wide workforce in Canada, the UK, Poland, the Czech Republic, and India."

The number of people being forced out of their jobs has not been announced; according to the Sumo Group website, more than 1,790 employees work at several studios around the world, bringing the total to about 270.

In any case, just a day earlier, Sumo Digital announced "Critter Cafe" at the Wholesome Direct showcase and at the PC Gaming Show with a gameplay trailer for "DeathSprint 66" and a "Still Wakes the Deep" launch trailer at the PC Gaming Show, the layoffs are especially disappointing, as the company was enjoying a "busy weekend."

Polygon senior reporter Nicole Carpenter said on Twitter that the layoffs may include the complete closure of development studio Timbre Games, although Sumo Group did not specifically mention the studio, several Timbre Games employees confirmed the closure on LinkedIn.

"This morning the team at Timbre Games was told that the studio is closing," wrote scenario designer Daniel Hunter. 'This comes as a shock and we are still trying to process it. I've only been at the studio for a few months, but it's been a great place to work and I'm sad to see my time here come to an end."

"I am disappointed to share that Timbre Games is closing its doors," said game designer and creative lead Sophie Mallison in a separate post.

Timbre Games was founded by the Sumo Group in July 2021 and was only three years old. The company had not released any games, but according to its website, had two games in development at the time of its closing, one an ARPG and the other less well defined: "like an ARPG, like an RPG, like a sim."

The layoffs and studio closures are a new addition to the long list of terrible things we have witnessed and written about since the beginning of 2023: companies large and small are eliminating jobs and closing offices in order to grow or stave off extinction. [In May 2024 alone, Behaviour Interactive, Avalanche Studios Group, Intercept Games, Phoenix Labs, and Square Enix announced layoffs, Microsoft spent $68.7 billion to less than a year after acquiring Activision Blizzard, it closed four studios, including "Prey" developer Arkane Austin and "Hi-Fi Rush" developer Tango Gameworks.

For the second time, Xbox boss Phil Spencer recently tried to justify these job cuts by saying that the company needs to "run a sustainable business," which sometimes means having to make "hard decisions." The remarks came on the same day that tech analyst Pierre Ferrag predicted Microsoft's enterprise value to be $4 trillion.