Rovi-oh-no: Angry Birds dev plans to lay off 16% of its workforce

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Photo: Rovio
Photo: Rovio

Things go from bad to worse for Angry Birds developer Rovio. Having seen its CEO step down in August, now the Finnish studio has announced that job cuts are on the cards — to the tune of up to 130 people.

In a blog post, outgoing head honcho Mikael Hed claimed that these cuts were part of an effort to simplify the company after a period of ambitious growth that is considered no longer sustainable.

“We are an entrepreneurial company and have been exploring multiple areas,” Hed wrote. “We have been building our team on assumptions of faster growth than have materialized. As a result, we announced today that we plan to simplify our organization around our three key businesses with the highest growth potential: games, media, and consumer products. Unfortunately, we also need to consider possible employee reductions of a maximum of 130 people in Finland (approximately 16% of workforce).”

With these changes made, Hed writes that Rovio is well-paced to make a comeback and to continue delivering the kinds of products fans expect.

It’s unknown what effect these layoffs will have have on the studio and its ability to produce its core titles.

Although it’s continued to be popular, Angry Birds has fallen out of the top 100 free apps in recent times — while other attempts to branch the company out into areas like animation and merchandising have been unable to fill the revenue hole left by falling popularity. Last year’s Rovio profits fell to half those reported back in 2012.

No word on what any of this means for the eagerly-anticipated Angry Birds movie due out in 2016.

Via: iMore

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