Niantic lays off 230 employees, cancels NBA and Marvel games

techcrunch.com:

Pokémon GO maker Niantic laid off 230 employees today, just one year after it laid off around90 employees.

During last year’s layoffs, Niantic cancelled four projects, including a Transformers game. Some Niantic games will meet the same fate this time around. After four months in the App Store, Niantic is shutting down NBA All-World; the company will also cancel production on a game based on the Marvel franchise.

“In the wake of the revenue surge we saw during Covid, we grew our headcount and related expenses in order to pursue growth more aggressively,” CEO John Hanke wrote in an email to employees, cross-posted to the company blog.

This has been a common refrain among the hundreds of tech companies that have conducted layoffs over the last year; companies claimed they overhired during the pandemic and now need to right-size their teams. In Niantic’s case, Hanke said that revenue has returned to pre-pandemic levels, and new projects have not delivered as much revenue as they would have hoped.

One such new project is Peridot, a Tamagotchi-like mobile game. Niantic’s first attempt at original IP since Ingress, Peridot launched in May. But according to Market Intelligence Firm Sensor Tower, Peridot has only made $1.4 million in gross in-app purchase revenue thus far.

Peridot is a technologically sophisticated game, complete with a robust breeding system that makes every players’ pets genetically unique. But players were disappointed at launch, since many of the game’s most exciting features are paywalled. The only way to hatch a new Peridot, for example, is to pay $5 for an in-game item. And once you pay to hatch a Peridot, you discover that you also have to pay if you want your new pet to have certain unique fur patterns or