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Changes abound as the industry continues to struggle
October 22, 2024 - NCSoft, the South Korean developer best known for Guild Wars 2, Throne and Liberty, and Lineage, will undergo a company restructure and layoffs. As reported by Yonhap, the layoffs are a product of the company's ongoing financial woes.
"We reviewed and fiercely discussed various alternatives to overcome the current situation, but we concluded that it would be difficult to overcome the situation with just a few symptomatic methods,” co-CEOs Taek-Jin Kim and Byung-Moo Park stated.
Company management has claimed the changes are coming due to low performance and underwhelming sales, saying “as a result of operating in a way that most of the manpower and functions are concentrated at the headquarters, financial performance has continued to deteriorate and we are at risk of becoming a chronically loss-making company.”
They continue, "there will be terminations and reductions in projects and support functions with uncertain market competitiveness, and personnel reductions that will occur in the process.”
This announcement follows the recent release of Throne and Liberty, which has seen more than 3 million players join since launch. It is unknown whether this metric is in-line with internal company expectations, or if NCSoft's troubles stem from its other projects.
Layoffs like this have been happening all across the video game industry over the last few years, with more than 15,000 people losing their jobs this year alone.
Studios are finding it harder and harder to stay afloat as development costs balloon, and the market moves toward live-service games as a core part of their development pipeline. Coupled with general economic anxiety and COVID-related aftereffects, this has created a very harsh downward trend across the industry.
With more than 2 months remaining in the year, who knows how much more of this we'll see in 2024. Hopefully the industry will stabilize soon, and stories like NCSoft's become less common as we move into 2025.
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