Publisher Humble Games has laid off most of their staff today based on a series of reports from now former employees at the small publisher. Founded as a spinoff of charity bundle site Humble Bundle, Humble Games currently answers to Ziff Davis directly and has published over 50 games since it's launch including hits like Slay the Spire, Void Bastards, Unpacking, Temtem, and Signalis.
Reports began emerging this afternoon on Linked In as people posted they had been laid off, with eventually a clearer picture emerging that the publisher was under going major changes, and that 36 people had been laid off. According to Nicola Kwan who was part of Business Development at Humble Games, the team was informed at 9 AM this morning that they were being let go and the company was shutting down.
While early reports had placed it that Humble Games was being shut down, an official statement from Humble Games shared the following:
"In these challenging economic times for indie game publishing, Humble Games has made the difficult but necessary decision to restructure our operations. This decision was not made lightly; it involved much deliberation and careful thought, with the goal of ensuring the stability and support of our developers and ongoing projects. Additionally, the restructuring of operations at Humble Games will have no impact on operations at Humble Bundle.
We are acutely aware of the profound impact this decision has on our team members at Humble Games and deeply empathize with everyone affected. Our team's contributions have been world-class and invaluable, supporting the launch of our games since we started publishing in 2017. We are committed to navigating this transition with as much empathy and understanding as possible.
Supporting our development partners and assisting former team members remains our top priority. We are committed to making this transition as smooth as possible for everyone involved. Thank you for your support and compassion during this challenging period. It is deeply appreciated."
Nicola was far from the only Humble Games employee posting on LinkedIn or other social media about their job loss, or the closure of the publisher. One of the first that was spotted was by Senior QA worker Emilee Kieffer, sharing that this was the best team she had ever worked with, and hoping to work together with some of her former coworkers in the future.
What this means for games published previously by or upcoming from Humble Games is yet to be known, as developers of games seemed to be as much in the dark about the restructuring as anyone else. The developers of Prodeus posted on the social media outlet formerly known as Twitter saying, "We just heard the news about our publisher Humble Games. We loved working with all of the talented people there, and are sad that things ended up this way. We hope everyone can land on their feet" They then pledged to keep their community up to date on what is changing and if it will impact the game.
Especially when it was believed the company was entirely shutting down many remorseful comments emerged about Humble Games as they have published an eclectic but often award winning and commercially successful set of games. Robert Bowling, who launched the publishing arm of Humble games, said that he, "loved this little publisher that could", and that he was fortunate to start it off. It marks a continuing trend of layoffs this year, that has seen over 11k employees laid off in the field since the start of the year, already outdoing the over 10k that were laid off last year.
