Pokemon Go Dev Cancels Marvel Game, Lays Off 230 People

Pokemon Go developer Niantic has become the latest major game studio to announce serious layoffs and other significant changes. The company’s boss, John Hanke, notified staffers of a drastic change to the company’s organization and outlook that includes layoffs, a studio closure, and game cancellations.

Niantic is closing its Los Angeles studio and making cuts to the company’s headcount at other offices. Additionally, NBA All-World is going offline and the upcoming game Marvel: World of Heroes is now canceled. In total, Niantic is cutting about 230 jobs.

In an email from Hanke shared on Niantic’s website, the executive wrote that the “difficult changes” are needed to help the company “weather the current challenges in the market and take advantage of the long term opportunity in front of us.”

Going forward, Niantic will narrow its focus and concentrate on first-party titles that “most strongly embody” the company’s core values.

“The mobile gaming market is very mature and only the best and most differentiated titles have a chance to succeed. We also want to increase our focus on building for the emerging class of MR devices and future AR glasses,” he said, referring to mixed-reality and augmented-reality.

Hanke said these changes are the result of Niantic spending more than it is earning back in revenue. Like other companies, Niantic saw a surge in revenue during Covid, and the company staffed up and spent more to “pursue growth more aggressively.” But now, Hanke said revenue at Niantic has returned to pre-Covid levels and the new games that the company launched “have not delivered revenues commensurate with those investments.”

The changes announced today will “bring expenses and revenue back into line while preserving our core assets and long term upside,” Hanke said.

Hanke went on to cite the “overall global macroeconomic slowdown” as a reason for the layoffs, along with what he said were “unique challenges” in the increasingly crowded mobile market. Additionally, Hanke said the AR market is not taking off as fast as the company imagined.

“Today’s highly competitive mobile gaming market requires dazzling quality and innovation. It also requires strong monetization and a social core which can drive viral growth and long term engagement,” he said. “Teams need platform tools that are force multipliers, enabling them to build at the highest quality with powerful engagement features quickly and efficiently. Our AR map and platform must deliver the features that developers want in a robust and reliable way. We have not met our goals in all of these areas.”

Hanke said Niantic remains a believed in AR as the “future form factor for computing” and that Apple’s recent announcement of the Apple Vision Pro validates this thinking.

In the immediate future, Hanke said Niantic’s main priority is to keep Pokemon Go on a healthy trajectory. Hanke said Pokemon Go is a “forever game,” adding that it continues to invest more in the product and team behind Pokemon Go, though it also made “some adjustments” to the team. Hanke added that he feels confident about the future of Pikmin Bloom, Peridot, and Monster Hunter Now.

Finally, Hanke said the culture inside Niantic is changing as a result to become a “more direct and results-based” company.

“The leadership team and I are committed to cutting out unnecessary processes, duplicate lines of authority, and unclear decision making,” Hanke said.

Previously in 2023, Embracer announced major layoffs and game cancellations, Firaxis cut jobs, and Relic eliminated positions. Other companies that have cut staff this year have included The Molasses Flood, Unity, Ready at Dawn, Take-Two, Xbox, Ubisoft, and more.