Israeli video gaming company Plarium has announced that it is laying off 45 employees, including 30 in Israel, who have already been summoned to a hearing about their dismissal. The cuts are being made due to the cancellation of one of the games that was in development and was scrapped after some internal tests. Employees working on development and marketing of the game are being let go.
Plarium has game development studios and marketing activities in Herzliya and Poland, based on Ukrainian employees who worked in Kharkov and Kiev before the war. According to LinkedIn, the center in Herzliya employs over 270 people, and the company has a total of about 1,500 employees.
Plarium was acquired in 2019 for $700 million by Australian gaming company Aristocrat Leisure (ASX: ALL). Plarium, which remains incorporated in Israel, has an estimated $1 billion annual revenue and is highly profitable. Its leading game titles include: Raid - Shadow Legends; Vikings - War of Clans; Stormfall - Rise of Balur; and Lost Island. Schraga Mor was appointed Plarium CEO last year after serving as SodaStream's head of online operations, a senior executive at William Hill and CEO of ICQ in its final years.
Plarium said, "The company has halted development of the game Nova Legends, which unfortunately did not achieve the targets defined for it. The games studio related to it will undergo reorganization to focus on other projects while a number of positions have become superfluous due to duplication in other teams. We have informed the relative team members and those affected will receive compensation and the support required.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on January 10, 2024.
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