Humble Games layoffs add to industry woes

Publisher of the Humble Bundle seemingly cut several jobs
Humble Games layoffs add to industry woes
Humble Games layoffs add to industry woes /

Update (November 15, 2023): Humble Games has confirmed this week's layoffs at the company, though it did not comment on their scale in a statement provided to us via a representative:

Yesterday was a difficult day for Humble Games and we can confirm that we had to say goodbye to valued colleagues. Like many companies this year, we have experienced trends that required this restructure in order to ensure our long-term success.

It's especially worth noting that everyone impacted by these changes are talented, dedicated individuals who made a huge impact.

Humble Games remains focused and committed to working with amazing indie developers to bring their experiences to players around the world in the years ahead.


Original (November 14, 2023): It looks like it’s going to be another dire week for workers in the games industry. Amazon Games laid off roughly 180 people in its second wave of job cuts this year on Monday, and the tech giant is seemingly not the only company that has to break bad news to some of its employees: It appears as if Humble Games had to let go several workers this week as well.

According to a post on LinkedIn by a former staff member at Humble Games, which seems to corroborate an anonymous tip GLHF received earlier, the layoffs at Humble happened on Monday. “It's a sad day at Humble Games for a lot of folks. I personally was just laid off from my Lead Release Manager position,” they wrote. Several current Humble Games employees commented on the post in a supportive manner.

Humble Games logo on a dark blue field.
Humble Games is seemingly the next company to lay off employees in the games industry / Humble Games

According to the post, the layoffs impacted several workers, though we could so far not confirm this information with anyone else that was directly affected. At least one other post speaking of “the layoffs at Humble Games” – again, we seem to be dealing with several – coming from a person who left the company earlier was shared by a current employee.

We’ve asked Humble Games for clarification on the scale of these layoffs.

Humble Games operates a digital storefront that most people will know from its popular Humble Bundles. These packages contain products like video games, software, and ebooks, which the customer can buy very cheaply while donating a part of the proceeds to charity. Humble has a publishing arm for video games as well, which focuses on indie games. 2017 hit Slay the Spire was one of the first titles published under this label.

Another title published by Humble Games, Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical, recently was nominated for a Grammy Award.


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Marco Wutz
MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg