Firaxis lays off undisclosed number of staff

Following the lukewarm reception of Civilization 7 earlier this year, developer Firaxis has laid off an undisclosed number of employees. 2K Games confirmed the cuts in a statement provided to Game Developer, which reported that “dozens” were impacted by the layoffs.

At the time of writing, no official statement has been made by Firaxis or 2K other than what the company told Game Developer.

While Civilization 6 recovered from its initial reception with the release of its expansions, Firaxis hasn’t been on a hot streak lately. Although liked by critics and users, Marvel’s Midnight Suns is regarded as a commercial miss and now Civilization 7 is clearly not doing as well as hoped. The game peaked at around 84,000 concurrent users on Steam shortly after launch, which is around half of its predecessor. Daily numbers look even worse by comparison, with this year’s release reaching around 10,000 CCU at weekends, while Civ 6 triples or quadruples that number daily.

Still, Civilization 6’s turnaround should give Firaxis hope for the future, providing a clear model for its current game to follow. A steady stream of updates has already been released and more are on their way, including additional work on the Age Transition mechanics.

Amplitude CEO Romain de Waubert de Genlis recently told DBLTAP that Civ 7 and Humankind will be regarded as influential as Civ 5 in the future.

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