Messaging and chat platform Discord is making significant cuts to its workforce, affecting 170 members of staff (17% of the company), according to a report from The Verge.
In an internal memo sent to employees, which The Verge has shared, Discord’s CEO, Jason Citron, pointed to the company’s efficiency, stating that the workforce had become five times larger since 2020. The layoffs, he said, are meant to address this and allow the company to become stronger and more profitable.
TechRadar Gaming (TRG) has reached out to Discord for comment on the situation, and we will update this story if we get a response.
This week, layoffs at live-streaming service Twitch and game software development company Unity were announced. At Unity, approximately 25% of the workforce has been impacted, with around 1,800 people laid off as part of a “company reset.”
Last November, Unity’s interim CEO James Whitehurst revealed that the company was planning to roll out certain interventions - which would “likely include discontinuing certain product offerings, reducing our workforce, and reducing our office footprint” - before the end of Q1 2024. However, this latest wave of layoffs isn’t the first to have hit staff since this announcement - later in November 2023, 265 people were laid off as Unity terminated the ‘professional services’ section of an agreement it had with the visual effects company Wētā FX.
Meanwhile, at Twitch, over 500 people were laid off this week. CEO Dan Clancy described this as an “incredibly difficult and painful” but ultimately “necessary” decision. He noted that "it has become clear that our organization is still meaningfully larger than it needs to be given the size of our business."
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