Iron Galaxy, the developer of Killer Instinct seasons 2 and 3, Extinction, and Rumbleverse, is laying off 66 employees as a "last resort" effort to keep the studio afloat.
"For several years now, we have watched our industry undergo significant change," the studio wrote in a message posted on the Iron Galaxy website. "So many of our friends and colleagues who work in game development have suffered a series of painful adjustments. We’ve seen talented people lose their jobs. Inspiring companies have closed their doors. Our own game, Rumbleverse, was met with a premature sunset.
"All the while at Iron Galaxy, we’ve been making sacrifices to keep our teams intact. It has been our hope that we could emerge from this long winter alongside all the teammates who have come to work with us over the years. Today, we’re making the unfortunate announcement that we have run out of room to maneuver amidst this slow recovery.
"Today, Iron Galaxy is parting ways with some of our developers and support staff. In total, we have reduced our employee base by 66 people. This was a means of last resort for us. It’s a measure we do not take lightly to enable our long-term survival."
Iron Galaxy was founded in 2008 and released its first game, Wreckateer, in 2012. It followed that with Divekick, support for Killer Instinct, Extinction, and its most recent original game, Rumbleverse, a "wrestling battle royale" that launched in 2022.
Rumbleverse lasted only six months before it was taken offline in February 2023, but Iron Galaxy has also worked as a co-developer and support studio on numerous high-profile games over the years including Skyrim, Overwatch, Uncharted, Fallout: 76, and Diablo 3, which then-co-CEO Adam Boyes said in a 2024 interview with GamesIndustry "creates more of a spider web sort of support system," and that "we try to have a myriad of partners and projects to create a bit more stability."
In that same interview, Boyes also emphasized the studio's approach to transparency with its employees, including monthly Q&A sessions with Iron Galaxy's co-CEOs. "You can't hide from the realities of what's happening in the industry," he said. "If you're not talking about it, you've got your head in the sand, and if you're doing that, what are you? What kind of a leader are you?
"If [layoffs] ever occur at Iron Galaxy, it's not because it came out of the blue. You're going to see all of the decisions that we made along the way and we're going to share with [employees]. So if heaven forbid that ever does occur, then at least [staffers] saw the process."
And now, less than a year later, here we are. Despite Iron Galaxy's quest for stability, the cuts feel almost inevitable at this point: It comes at the start of the third year of an industry-wide bloodbath that's put tens of thousands of people at game companies of all sizes out of work. 2023 was a tough year, 2024 was even worse, and so far 2025 isn't looking like a turnaround is in the offing: January alone saw significant cuts at Piranha Games, Ubisoft, Phoenix Labs, and BioWare. It's bad enough that even Mythic Quest, the Rob McElhenney-headed comedy series about a fictional MMO and the studio who makes it, touches on the topic.
Boyes announced last August that he would be leaving Iron Galaxy at the end of the year, which in hindsight could've been one part of the company's maneuvering to try to avoid layoffs. "An industry that I love is suffering. My new inspirations are to find ways to help people who make games solve their biggest problems," Boyes wrote at the time; he recently launched a consultancy business with a similar mission statement.
Despite the layoffs, Iron Galaxy said its "capabilities remain intact," and that it will "continue to explore new ways to support an industry we love and keep working towards its ongoing recovery."
