100 Thieves is laying off 20 percent of its staff as it focuses on ‘core’ of esports and apparel

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By Jay Peters, a news editor who writes about technology, video games, and virtual worlds. He’s submitted several accepted emoji proposals to the Unicode Consortium.

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Another big esports brand is making some major changes. 100 Thieves, which already announced layoffs in January, is laying off more staff and spinning out its internal game development studio and its Juvee energy drink, 100 Thieves president and COO John Robinson said in a Thursday thread on X (formerly Twitter). The cuts impact roughly 20 percent of the company’s employees and primarily affect Juvee and the game development studio, Robinson tells The Verge. (Robinson wouldn’t confirm a specific number of employees affected.)

100 Thieves was founded in 2017 by Call of Duty star Matt “Nadeshot” Haag and quickly became known for blending gaming and apparel to become something like the Supreme of esports. (Drake and Scooter Braun are co-owners, as are streamers Rachell “Valkyrae” Hofstetter and Jack “CouRage” Dunlop.) The organization also expanded beyond those core focuses to into things like hardware sales, making a video game codenamed Project X, and, last October, launching Juvee. But it appears that 100 Thieves has stretched itself too thin, resulting in the changes Robinson announced Thursday.

“During the esports franchising era, we saw tremendous growth in our esports business and our brand and were fortunate to be able to make investments beyond that core,” Robinson wrote on X. “As the economic landscape has changed over the last two years, the growth of our business did not keep pace with the growth of our organization. We cannot afford as large of an