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Idle Games has laid off 25 employees, confirms CEO and founder Jeffy Hyman.
The studio launched its innovative MMO Idle Worship on Facebook earlier this year, but the game struggled to find an audience.
“You either needed medication because you loved it so much or you just didn’t play it,” Hyman told Inside Social Games.
“There was no happy medium.”
Though Idle worship has been nominated for a GDC Online Innovation award, that doesn’t change the profit margins.
With just 10,000 monthly active users and $0.12 to $0.13 cents of average revenue per daily user the game simply wasn’t pulling in enough cash.
Hyman said the game would continue to be supported and is once again in the black following the layoffs.
40 developers are still employed at the studio and there is a chance Idle Worship will be ported to another platform, but in the meantime Idle Games will focus on its upcoming casino titles.
Fresh Deck Poker is due for launch in October but is already playable on Facebook and is being advertised in South-East Asia.
Hyman was understandably cynical about Idle Worship’s financial results.
"There’s a good life lesson there that you don’t need to innovate on every single vector,” he said.
”In order to be successful you don’t want the press, reviews and accolades. You want bucket loads of money.”
