Marvel Contest of Champions dev Kabam lays off 7% of staff

TechCrunch reports that mobile developer/publisher Kabam laid off 35 employees (or 7 percent of its workforce) earlier in the week. In a statement provided to the outlet, a representative for Kabam said that the layoffs were a part of its restructuring plans. 

With offices in locations such as Los Angeles and Vancouver, and 500 employees overall, it's unclear which specific Kabam studios are affected. At time of writing, the publisher is hiring for nearly two dozen positions.

"As we at Kabam reviewed our strategic priorities, we made the decision to adjust our resourcing structure in alignment with our goals," the statement read. "While we will continue to hire in key areas in the year ahead, unfortunately, we are reducing our workforce by approximately 7 percent."

Kabam is best known for its phone-based games related to franchises such as Marvel and Fast & Furious. Earlier this year, it released Disney Mirrorverse for iOS and Android. 

This past February, the developer shut down Marvel Realm of Champions, a freemium spinoff to the popular mobile fighter Contest of Champions. At the time, Kabam explained that with Realm of Champions, the title "had not been able to meet the vision that we had initially set."

Layoffs have become a big part of fall 2022

While it's not uncommon for companies to lay off staff near the holidays, the fall season has been fairly devastating thus far, and in quite large droves. 

Earlier in the week, Meta announced it was laying off 11,000 employees, or 13 percent of its entire workforce. The layoffs affected Meta's AR/VR-focused Reality Labs division, which reported a loss of $3.7 billion during the company's recent Q3 finance report.

Last week, Elon Musk laid off nearly half of Twitter's then-7,500 employees following his $44 billion takeover of the social media company. Among those larger layoffs were staffers of Twitter Gaming, the website's video game-focused division. 

And in the middle of October, Microsoft laid off what's believed to be around 1,000 employees. Some of those layoffs were in the Xbox and Microsoft Edge teams, and come as Microsoft continues its pricey $68.7 billion effort to acquire Activision Blizzard.