A restructuring of teams is underway at Rovio, the creators of the Angry Birds franchise. Unfortunately, their latest game, Angry Birds Dream Blast, did not meet the company’s objectives.
As a result, 36 employees were laid off this week. Senior staff working on Angry Birds Dream Blast were affected. A spokesperson for Rovio also confirmed that the company is restructuring its studio to improve production quality and fully integrate with SEGA.
“No games have been canceled, but unfortunately Angry Birds Dream Blast did not deliver the expected results. We restructured our organization this fall in response to the underperformance of one of our games and in order to better respond to the market, evolve towards a more game-centric approach, and be able to iterate quickly on new game ideas.
We are creating new business units, reorganizing some of our game studios, and reassigning some of the games developed there. For example, the Puzzle studio in Finland will focus on fewer games, with some of them becoming an independent business unit. Our Barcelona office will handle more games than it has in the past.
We are also making some changes to our management structure to reflect our role as a privately held company and to strengthen our relationship with SEGA. As a result, our CEO is spending more time at Rovio’s various locations and at SEGA of Europe’s offices. These changes have led to the modification of certain roles, the creation of several new roles, and the termination of a total of 36 employees.”
