MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
Storm8, the team behind mobile games Bubble Game and licensed efforts Monopoly Bingo and Clue Bingo, has just announced that they’ve let go around 130 jobs from their 240-person team.
Storm8 have claimed more than one billion downloads of their apps and in 2015 claimed to have 50 million monthly active users. However, the casual mobile game market can be difficult to predict, and it seems that despite a deal with Hasbro allowing it to create titles based on Bingo, Monopoly and Clue, they’ve fallen out of favour with audiences and this has cost the business dearly, despite their successes.
"The mobile gaming industry has continued to rapidly evolve," founder Perry Tam told Venturebeat, who broke the news. "We believe having a leaner organisation with sharper focus is essential to win in the growing $40-plus billion mobile games market. As such, we’ve made the very difficult decision to realign resources and part ways with approximately 130 talented colleagues. We truly appreciate everyone’s hard work and dedication to Storm8 over the years. Moving forward, a more streamlined Storm8 will build off a strong foundation, be better positioned to support our existing games and successfully bring new games to market. We remain very excited for the future of mobile games and being well-positioned for sustained profitable growth."
