All Humble Games Employees Have Been Fired. „The Game Industry Is Volatile, It's Been Inundated by People Who Only Want Exponential Growth at the Expense of Making Great Games With Great Teams”

There have been more layoffs in the industry. All employees of indie game publisher Humble Games have been laid off as the company undergoes restructuring.

Source: Humble Games / HopFrog.

Update (July 24)

Aftermath.site shed new light on the matter. In an article about Humble Games, we read that Steve Horowitz, the CEO of the technology and purchasing department of Ziff Davis (owner of Humble Games), pointed out large delays and rising costs as the main problems the company is struggling with. Ziff tried to sell Humble Games twice, but "no attempt resulted in a real purchase offer being made." As a result, employees were laid off, and the remaining projects will be completed by the external studio The Powell Group.

Former employees of Humble Games are furious about this, seeing the characterization of this situation as "restructuring" as a classic case of damage control by Ziff Davis. There were also allegations that the owner is "simply lying."

Ziff is trying to spread the idea that it's a restructuring to save face, but that's a lie -- anonymous employee of Humble Games.

Operations have been handed off to a third party consultancy. NO staff are left. Do not believe this tailored message written by the parent company of Humble Games, Ziff Davis, who are trying to mitigate pushback -- former Humble Games employee, Chris Radley.

The business models were just incompatible with each other. Ziff is very good at owning a lot of media and increasing revenue in advertising, and Humble Games publishing was just not something that agreed with their business model. They needed money. They needed it now -- anonymous employee of Humble Games.

Ziff Davis does not understand the world of game development – and the principle that when you invest money, a game is not released in six months but takes time to be done – and were starting to not like this when they understood its workings, so with their stock going down, they simply decided they did not want to be in that business anymore -- another anonymous employee of Humble Games.

Update (July 23)

Humble Bundle issued a statement to Game Developer. Humble Games isn't being shut down, but is undergoing a restructuring process.

Original news (July 23)

Gaming hasn't had the best time lately. Many people working in the industry had to say goodbye to their positions - studios such as Tango Gameworks, Volition, and Pieces Interactive were closed. The entire Humble Games team joined the ranks of the victims today.

Many employees of this publishing company shared goodbye messages with the rest of the team on social media today. We don't know the exact reason for the closure of Humble Games from these limited pieces of information. The branch consisted of 36 people - all of whom were informed today of its closure and resulting layoffs.

A senior quality specialist in the company, Emilee Kieffer, didn't hold back in her comments about the higher-ups in large companies regarding the entire situation.

Another year, another lay off! Today is mine and my entire team's last day at Humble Games. [...] The game industry is volatile, it's been inundated by people who only want exponential growth at the expense of making great games with great teams. Billionaires and CEOs are making record profits at the expense of the employees [...]. I believe we have the power to create studios that benefit us as game developers and not people that only see us as money printing machines

Humble Games is an internal division of Humble Bundle, which is responsible for publishing independent games. Such titles as Ring of Pain, Forager, Unpacking, Signalis, Coral Island, and Midnight Fight Express came from under its wings, and most recently also Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus. We do not know to what extent the closure of Humble Games will affect the rest of the company - including the Choice subscription. The owner of Humble Games, Ziff Davis, hasn't yet commented on the matter.