Pokemon GO developer Niantic cuts workforce by a quarter after struggling to make lightning strike twice
John Hanke—CEO of Niantic Inc.—announced a new round of layoffs in a company email, which was then posted on the official Niantic website yesterday.
«I have made the decision to narrow our focus for mobile game investments, concentrating on first party games that most strongly embody our core values of location and local social communities,» wrote John Hanke, shortly before laying off one fourth of the company. «This means we are laying off around 230 Niantics.»
As for the reasons why, Hanke writes: «The answer is straightforward – we have allowed our expenses to grow faster than revenue,» citing a surge of revenue during the Covid-19 pandemic which prompted them to «pursue growth more aggressively.»
The decline of that revenue to pre-pandemic levels is mainly because its «new projects in games and platform have not delivered revenues commensurate with those investments,» said Hanke.
Those stabs at new projects have included Harry Potter: Wizards Unite (which shut down last year) Catan: World Explorers (shut down in 2021), and Transformers: Heavy Metal (also cancelled last year). Pikmin Bloom escaped the chopping block, mixing it up with its journaling-style «lifelog» system, which saw you entering a photo or a text entry at the end of each day. However, Marvel: World of Heroes and NBA All-World have both been cancelled or sunsetted as part of this new round of layoffs.
«In the years since Pokemon GO’s launch, the mobile market has become crowded and changes to the app store and the mobile advertising landscape have made it increasingly hard to launch new mobile games at scale [...] We also bear responsibility for our own performance. Today’s highly competitive mobile gaming market requires dazzling quality and
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