Microsoft earlier this month announced it is laying off around four percent or as many as 9,100 employees. The layoffs include about 200 people at Candy Crush developer King, which is about 10 percent of its total staff.
Anonymous sources speaking with Mobilegamer.biz have claimed many of the people laid off will be replaced by AI tools that helped build and train.
The sources also say “practically half” of the Farm Heroes Saga team have been made redundant. This would be around 50 of the 200 King employees.
“Most of level design has been wiped, which is crazy since they’ve spent months building tools to craft levels quicker,” said one anonymous staffer. “Now those AI tools are basically replacing the teams. Similarly the copywriting team is completely removing people since we now have AI tools that those individuals have been creating.
“The fact AI tools are replacing people is absolutely disgusting but it’s all about efficiency and profits even though the company is doing great overall. If we’re introducing more feedback loops then it’s crazy to remove the developers themselves, we need more hands and less leadership.”
The source also claims the total number of King employees laid off could be more than 200. Staff have been let go in the London, Barcelona, Stockholm and Berlin studios, as well as many centralized staff, including research and QA. Some programmers have also been removed “arbitrary reasons.”
“If a resource is centralized it is being cut or moved into the production teams,” said one source.
Another source says there are HR problems at King.
“King HR is an absolute shitshow and has been for years,” said the source. “An extreme example of an HR department whose role it is to protect the company, not the staff.”
An internal employee survey shows morale was already low at King since before the layoffs.
“The SLT [senior leadership team] said improving morale was a top priority…as you can imagine, it’s now in the gutter,” said a source familiar with the survey.
A staffer that attended meetings on the day of the layoffs stated King’s leadership wanted to remove layers, stakeholders, and processes that were slowing down development. This includes middle management.
“They also mentioned the fact that we are too specialized now and siloed between crafts, which has got us to our amazing profits but now is hampering us so we need to merge and generalize,” they said. “It seemed that the main info communicated to us by leadership was literally being read like a script in the calls which is like a slap to the face.”
Another sourced added, “Despite the conditions forced upon the teams by inept leadership, the teams are very close-knit and do genuinely care about each other and are passionate about improving their games.”
A life-long and avid gamer, William D’Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
Full Article – https://www.vgchartz.com/article/465219/sources-claim-laid-off-king-staff-will-be-replaced-by-ai-tools-they-helped-build/
