Smite Team Reportedly Hit With Layoffs

Posted by By our-little-miss-is-home February 10, 2025 7 Views 5 Min Read
Smite Team Reportedly Hit With Layoffs
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Summary

  • Hi-Rez Studios confirms layoffs in 3 subsidiaries, choosing to focus on Smite 2 development.
  • Layoffs follow market challenges, affecting the future of Smite, Paladins, & Rogue Company.
  • Reported number of layoffs may be close to 70, causing the CEO to deactivate their Twitter account.

Hi-Rez Studios, the publisher behind the well-received MOBA title Smite, has confirmed laying off an undisclosed number of employees across multiple studios. Being the parent company of five different subsidiaries, Hi-Rez Studios oversees the teams behind a number of different games, including Smite, Smite 2, Paladins, and Rogue Company.

Similar to the past few years, the layoff wave has continued taking victims in 2025 as well. After giants like Ubisoft announced job cuts in January, Hi-Rez Studios has now entered the fray with layoffs of its own. The latter’s move affects three different studios in its portfolio and impacts the future of its various online titles. Alarmingly, the announcement also marks the second time the company has trimmed down its workforce in the past four months, after last doing so in October 2024.

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In a Discord announcement, captured by Twitter user Hocky2001 (via Game Developer), Hi-Rez Studios revealed that they laid off an unknown number of employees across Evil Mojo Games, Rally Here, and Titan Forge Games. It mentioned that the “difficult decision” stemmed from a “challenging” market and was taken with the “long-term sustainability” of these studios in mind. Interestingly, this echoed a similar statement issued by the Rogue Company publisher at the time of its October layoffs. Moreover, the American company shared that its “newly streamlined operations” would focus on bringing new content to Smite 2 here onward, whereas the original Smite, Paladins, and Rogue Company would receive “no further major updates.” However, the latter games’ server support is expected to remain in place going into the future, with Hi-Rez committing to keep the game accessible for “as long as possible.”

Reported Number of Layoffs Soar After Smite Creator’s Announcement

Although initially around 30 Hi-Rez employees had taken to social media to share that they had been laid off, this number has grown over the past week. Per the latest InsiderGaming report, the number of axed employees could be close to 70, according to its sources. Notably, since facing backlash post the layoff announcement, the CEO of the Smite 2 publisher, Stewart Chisam, also deactivated his Twitter account.

With Smite 2 only recently exiting its early access period and releasing officially on January 14, 2025, Hi-Rez’s decision to prioritize the free-to-play title’s development is understandable given its newness. At the same time, it would be interesting to see how long the American publisher can do that while still supporting its other online games. Just weeks after its previous layoffs in late 2024, Hi-Rez Studios had communicated its decision to shut down Realm Royale Reforged’s servers in the following year. So, an announcement like that related to Paladins, Rogue Company, or Smite in the coming months may not be unlikely.

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