Sega Sammy Holdings, the parent company of Japanese video game publisher Sega, announced Thursday it would cut about 240 additional positions in Europe, after already cutting 250 jobs in the region where its operations are currently suffering since late September last year.
Consumer trends are “evolving rapidly, particularly in Europe,” including declining demand for home entertainment such as video games in a post-Covid context and “slower economic growth due to inflation,” Sega Sammy justified in a press release.
So last September the group undertook a restructuring of its European operations to improve its profitability by “streamlining” fixed costs and being more selective in its investment approach.
In Europe, the group has offices and video game development studios in the UK, Bulgaria and Turkey. It also owns the Finnish Rovio (“Angry Birds”) since last year and the French studio Amplitude since 2016.
Sega Sammy had more than 8,200 full-time employees worldwide in 2023, including 2,355 outside Japan, according to its latest annual report.
The group also announced on Thursday the sale of its Canadian studio Relic Entertainment, which it acquired in 2013.
This studio, specializing in strategy video games (the Warhammer 40,000 franchise, Ages of Empires IV), will be sold to the British investment company Emona Capital. The financial terms of this transaction were not specified.
The entire global video game sector is currently under austerity, with Microsoft announcing 1,900 layoffs at its subsidiaries Xbox and Activision Blizzard in early January, followed in February by Japan’s Sony, which cut 900 jobs at its PlayStation subsidiary.
US-based Epic Games, maker of the hugely popular video game Fortnite, also announced in September last year that it would lay off around 830 people, or 16% of its workforce.
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