Rumbleverse Developer Lays Off 66 Employees To “Enable Long-term Survival”

Summary

• Iron Galaxy Studios, the makers of Rumbleverse, have laid off 66 employees.
• This cut was made to keep the company afloat during difficult times.
• 2025 has already faced many layoffs, and the now ex-employees are looking for work elsewhere.

With 2025 following the gaming industry’s most significant year of layoffs, it would be an understatement to say we’re already off to a rocky start. The latest affair is from Iron Galaxy Studios, the development team behind the now-defunct Rumbleverse, which has laid off 66 employees.

With the evergrowing scale of video games, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for these companies to maintain high budgets. Although these company-wide cuts are detrimental to employees, Galaxy Studios explained in a post on their website how these cuts were needed for the company to stay afloat.

Although it has not been noted what roles were let go, this number likely means a huge chunk was laid off in the past few weeks. Although the studio appeared kind enough to wait until after the holiday season, there’s no telling how much this will impact the studio’s future releases.

In the post on their website, the company explains how “we’ve been making sacrifices to keep our teams intact. It has been our hope that we could emerge from this long winter alongside all the teammates who have come to work with us over the years.”

Sadly, in order to avoid a company shutdown, they had to make some sweeping cuts, including laying off over 60 longtime employees. In order to stay afloat, they explain that “we have reduced our employee base by 66 people.”

“This was a means of last resort for us. It’s a measure we do not take lightly to enable our long-term survival.”

At the end of the message, they express that “we’ll be doing everything we can to support them in the search for the next phase of their careers. Keep an eye out for them if you need good people.”

Many now ex-employees have taken to social media to express their concern and their status of looking for employment elsewhere. With the many games behind their belt, Iron Galaxy lost a lot of talented individuals, but at the very least, this message hints layoffs seem to have occurred on relatively good terms.

Iron Galaxies Avoided Shutdown

As stated in their message, these cuts were necessary to avoid the company’s closure. Yet, this leads many of us to wonder what could have caused the company’s issues. An immediate topic some will point towards is recent failures like the shutdown of Rumbleverse.

Rumbleverse is now one of many high-budget online games that became defunct not even a few years after release. When taking a closer look, live-service and online business models have proved detrimental to companies seeking to capitalize on the next big trend.

Yet Rumbleverse and many other Iron Galaxy Studios titles have consistently received high praise for their quality​​​​​​. In fact, Rumbleverse was one of DualShockers top picks in 2022. Even if the game was a net negative for the company, it still deserves some recognition.

Games like Killer Instinct and many of the titles the studio helped co-develop deserve some credit as well, showing how noteworthy Galaxy Studios is within the industry. Despite clearly facing hard times, nothing has been explicitly reported that led to these layoffs.

It’s really unfortunate to see this company face hard times, and alongside Galaxy Studios’ appraisal, their now ex-employees seem to be highly viable candidates looking for work, and we wish them luck.