Lost Boys Interactive is the latest gaming studio to be hit by layoffs. The studio is a subsidiary of Gearbox, and Gearbox is owned by Embracer Group. Lost Boys Interactive has been in the industry since 2017 and have helped co-develop games such as Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, The Quiet Man, and Diablo 4. The studio was picked up by Gearbox in 2022 and had grown to employ over 400 people.
There is no exact figure on how many of those 400+ people have been laid off today from Lost boys Interactive. Jared Pace, a producer at Lost Boys wrote on LinkedIn that "a sizable portion of Lost Boys Interactive was laid off today, including myself." Pace said to Aftermath that the layoffs "affected all disciplines at all levels."
Embracer owned studios have been hit particularly hard over the past year after a proposed deal worth $2 billion fell through at the last minute in 2023. Embracer has either fully shut down entire studios, as they did with Volition and Free Radical Design, or they have laid off hundreds of employees across many of their other studios. Today's layoffs at Lost Boys Interactive will, more than likely, not be the last to happen at an Embracer owned company.
It is now only 12 days into 2024 and already the gaming industry has laid off over 2,700 people. This figure includes 170 layoffs at Discord, 500 from Twitch, 19 at Bossa, 1,800 from Unity, over 300 from Playtika, an unknown number from Archiact, and now an unknown number from Lost Boys Interactive. This figure also excludes layoffs that have hit the larger tech industry companies such as Amazon, Google, Instagram, and Xerox among others.
The Quiet Man is great! Just look at how thrilled I was when I streamed that entire shitshow only to have the final boss glitch out and the "checkpoint" load was just to redo the entirety of the absolute dogshit final chapter!
You can't fake that kind of joy!