Skydance has laid off at least 30 people in its games division, a month to the day after it closed its takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery. The cuts landed on Friday, November 6, and hit Skydance’s own game teams, including the studio behind The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners. Staff from the Warner Bros. Games studios don’t appear to be among them, at least so far.
“Most of my game team at Skydance Interactive got laid off today,” gameplay programmer Rebecca Vessal wrote on LinkedIn that Friday. She wasn’t affected herself, and asked game companies to “please consider them for any open roles.”
At least 30 Skydance games staff were let go on November 6
Skydance hasn’t announced the cuts or given a number. A report based on accounts from multiple employees puts it at at least 30 people across a range of roles, and says the real figure is believed to be higher. We found no statement from Skydance about the games layoffs.
Developers who kept their jobs are vouching for the ones who didn’t
The clearest picture of who was cut comes from the people still there. “Skydance just lost a ton of great talent yesterday,” Paramount Games engineer David Vera wrote on Saturday. “The Skydance crew wasn’t let go because of performance or problematic behaviors. These are all extremely worthy folks who were pushing themselves to the limit to try to make something they could all be proud of.”
Vera’s post goes on to recommend affected gameplay designers, level designers, 2D artists, environment artists and 3D artists by name, and calls the art team “arguably” Skydance Interactive’s strongest department. He framed it as “a global recommendation from all of the folks affected.”
The cuts hit Skydance’s own studios, not Avalanche or Rocksteady
Skydance’s games group is new and stitched together. In June, Skydance Interactive and Skydance New Media were combined into Paramount Games Studio. After the Warner Bros. deal closed, that studio was merged with Warner Bros. Games’ internal developers, including Avalanche Software, NetherRealm Studios, Rocksteady Studios, TT Games and the WB Games teams in Montreal and Boston. Tony Driscoll, Skydance’s president of games and experiences, runs the combined group.
The people publicly known to be affected worked for Skydance before the acquisition. None of the posts we’ve seen say whether Skydance New Media’s projects, Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra and an untitled Star Wars game, lost staff. Both were confirmed as still in development in June.
Skydance’s leaders warned of “difficult decisions” on the day the deal closed
The $111 billion takeover closed on October 6. In a “Day 1” memo that morning, CEO David Ellison and co-CEO Ynon Kreiz told staff, “Integrating two companies will bring change, including difficult decisions that affect our workforce.” The company is targeting more than $6 billion in annual cost savings within three years, and has not said how many jobs that will cost.
On October 26, a second memo offered some employees a voluntary buyout and moved the whole company to five days a week in the office. Opt-in deadlines for those buyouts fall around the second week of November, which is this week.
