Publisher behind one of 2023's biggest Soulslikes announces $60 million "best-ever" year just 3 months after laying off 10% of staff
Apr. 23, 2024Lords of the Fallen sold 1 million copies in its first week
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Earlier this week, CI Games Group CEO Marek Tymiński announced a $60 million turnover, with profits of $3.5 million (viaGame Developer). Those results, which were the result of “a period of continued momentum” capped by the million-selling release of ambitious soulslikeLords of the Fallen, amounted to CI Games' “best year.”
That “best year,” however, comes not long after CI Games laid off 10% of its staff. Back in January, it announced the “tough but necessary” decision to let go several developers and the majority of the marketing team in an attempt to build “business strength and stability.” Recent fiscal reports state that around more than 180 people currently work at CI Games, suggesting that more than 20 people were made redundant.
This is just another example of the uncomfortable dichotomy facing the industry at the moment. On the one hand, companies are making a lot of money, yet huge numbers of developers have lost their jobs over the past two years. In perhaps the most egregious example I can think of,GTA 6 publisher Take-Two recently announced 600 layoffs, in spite of the lure of GTA 6 - the hotly-anticipated follow-up to a game that made $8.5 billion - being just over the financial horizon. CI Games has neither 600 staff to layoff nor a cash cow like Grand Theft Auto to rely on, but it remains indicative of a particularly strange trend across the industry.
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I’m GamesRadar’s news editor, working with the team to deliver breaking news from across the industry. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I’ve run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam’s latest indie hit.
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