Niantic lays off about 90 employees and cancels 4 projects

Niantic is parting ways with 8% of the payroll and closing four promising projects.

Niantic, developer of Pokémon Go, is cutting about 8% of its payroll, which is between 85 and 90 employees. The augmented reality video game company also canceled four projects. Its CEO, John Hanke, reportedly wrote in an email to employees that Niantic is “going through tough economic times”and needs to “downsize its operations to improve the company’s position,”whatever the future holds.

Niantic parting ways with 8% of wages

“We have decided to stop production on some projects and cut the payroll by about 8% to refocus on our priorities,” a Niantic spokesperson told Bloomberg. “We are grateful to those leaving Niantic and we support them through this difficult transition.”

One of the games discontinued by the company is Transformers: Heavy Metal. Niantic and Hasbro announced the game in 2021 and have been testing it in select markets since last summer. Niantic also stopped an immersive theater project called Hamlet. She worked on a project with the Punchdrunk theater company, which, among other things, staged a production of Macbeth called Sleep No More. The other two projects are called Blue Sky and Snowball.

and cancels four promising projects

Niantic failed to replicate the success of their Pokémon Go in 2016. The firm had already canceled the Harry Potter-based augmented reality game a few months ago. Bloomberg clarifies that games based on the Catan (which shut down last year) and the Nintendo Pikmin also didn’t do well.

The announcement of the layoffs and the project’s cancellation comes just a day after the studio released the official NBA All-World basketball game, created in partnership with the NBA and the league’s players’ association. At the same time, the company will soon launch an app to help Pokémon Go players trade with each other. He also works on an original game called Peridot and collaborates with other companies on augmented reality applications.