Just over a year after laying off 66 employees in what the studio said was was a “last resort” effort to “enable our long term survival,” Iron Galaxy, the developer of games including Killer Instinct seasons 2 and 3, Rumbleverse, and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4, has announced that it is once again “reducing our company size.”
“A number of teammates and friends are losing their jobs as we adjust to a new company structure,” the studio wrote in a message on LinkedIn. “We are terribly sorry to lose them as we take steps to adapt to the climate of the video game industry. It’s time for us to evolve again.”
Iron Galaxy pointed to changes in the videogame industry that began in 2020 as the driving force behind this round of cuts, saying that after years of waiting for things “to get back to normal”—an attitude that’s been held by the business at large, not just Iron Galaxy—”we’re adopting a new posture to accept these current market conditions as permanent.”
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“As Iron Galaxy adapts, we must make painful decisions about what we can be as a company,” the studio wrote. “It’s impossible for us to sustain the team size that we’ve carried this past year, even after our downsizing from last year.”
That’s alarming, given the dire situation portrayed by Iron Galaxy when those layoffs happened. “This was a means of last resort for us,” the studio said at the time. “It’s a measure we do not take lightly to enable our long-term survival.” Yet clearly it was not enough.
Iron Galaxy didn’t say how many people were let go, but included among them is former communications lead David Dague, well known to gamers for his long tenure as “Deej,” Bungie’s community manager and communications. Dague left Bungie in 2020, and joined Iron Galaxy shortly after.
“It has been a pleasure to work for Iron Galaxy for more than five years,” Dague wrote in his own layoff message. “I’d like to thank the leadership and my now former colleagues for providing an amazing professional experience. We did some things together I’ll always be proud of and remember fondly. This is a company that has always lived their values out loud. That will continue. I wish them well, and I have a sneaking suspicion we’ll work together again someday.”
Iron Galaxy caused a stir in March when it posted a social media message containing the “please stand by” screen from Fallout: New Vegas, leading fans (well, me, anyway) to speculate that it might be working on a long-awaited New Vegas remaster. The studio later shot down that speculation, saying it uses that slide for its meetings every month.
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