1 Day After SGF Reveals, Sumo Digital Lay-Offs Hit 15% of Staff & Kill Timbre Games

After Sumo Digital’s big announcements at Summer Game Fest 2024, one day later the group has taken to social media to announce staff cuts that will hit 15% and the closure of Timbre Games.

Just days after the Summer Game Fest 2024 presentation showcased some of Sumo Digital’s upcoming slate of releases, the company just let out a memo yesterday that details unfortunate downsizing. The post can be seen over on the Sumo official X (formerly Twitter) account and is also shown below.

After being featured at big events, and two of their upcoming games being shown at the Future Games Show in March, Sumo Digital has released a memo that forecasts the 15% staff layoffs. The memo reads “Over the last 21 years Sumo has grown from small beginnings into a family of studios across the UK and the world, which we’re incredibly proud of.”

The message continues with “The difficult decision to reduce our costs across the business in a number of ways is a direct result of these challenges, and unfortunately will include a reduction in the number of people the business can support.” The layoffs have been spread out company-wide and will affect Canada, UK, Poland, Czech Republic and India.

A recruitment coordinator for Timbre Games (a subsidy of Sumo Digital), Jenna Dore posted the studio’s closure over on LinkedIn , detailing that the whole studio has been closed. Dore says “Unfortunately, we learned today that Timbre Games is closing and our entire studio’s team of exceptionally talented and wonderful people, will no longer be employed” and that she is at “a bit of a loss for words.”

Sumo Digital is not the first to close studios or deploy layoffs this year, as Farhan Noor has put together a website that catalogues the total layoffs (and the companies) that the gaming industry has faced since 2022. PlayStation , Microsoft, Behaviour Interactive, CI Games and many more have already laid off thousands of workers this year alone. While Sumo Digital is not the first to lay off staff, it sadly appears that they won’t be the last.