Pokemon Go maker Niantic lays off 230 employees, shuts down some games

The latest to join the layoff spree is the Pokemon Go maker Niantic, which on Thursday (June 29) said that it would let go of 230 employees as a part of a restructuring that is aimed at stabilising the organisation's finances.

As per an email from Niantic CEO John Hanke, which was shared on the company's website, the major organisational changes, apart from layoffs, also include game shutdowns and the closure of its Los Angeles studio where most of the employees that will be affected, are based.

The company will stop production on its Marvel game, Marvel World of Heroes and will also cancel NBA All World.

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"We will be closing our LA studio, reducing our game platform team and making additional reductions across the company. As a result, we will be sunsetting NBA All-World and stopping production on Marvel: World of Heroes. This means we are laying off around 230 Niantics," Hanke said.

Further elaborating on the reasons behind the crucial decision, Hanke said that the move was taken because of “internal and external factors."

"There are both internal and external factors. We are operating in a tough market environment due to the overall global macroeconomic slowdown, as well as unique challenges in the mobile gaming and AR markets. In the years since Pokémon GO’s launch, the mobile market has become crowded and changes to the app store and the mobile advertising landscape have made it increasingly hard to launch new mobile games at scale. We also face an AR market that is developing more slowly than anticipated, because of technology challenges and because larger players are slowing down their investments in light of the macro environment," he wrote.

Hanke's letter emphasised on the strategies Niantic will adopt moving forward, highlighting how the company will continue to invest in AR platforms in order to develop and monetize AR experiences.

"We will continue to invest in our AR map and AR platform to enable developers to build, grow and monetize their own AR experiences. Our highest priority in this area is building an ecosystem of developers who create cross-platform, web (using 8th Wall) and Unity-based AR experiences. In the upcoming world of headsets, we expect much fragmentation and we believe, as was the case in mobile, that content creators will demand cross-platform solutions that enable them to leverage their content investment across the greatest number of devices and users. Our Visual Positioning System and human-centric AR map will provide them with the industry’s best tools for creating entirely new ways for people to see and explore the world," his letter read.

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