Smite 2 studio lays off workers and drops all other games to focus on the unfinished MOBA

Hi-Rez Studios have laid off an unknown number of the studio’s employees, only one month after launching MOBA sequel Smite 2 as a free-to-play beta. It looks like management has cut at least 20-30 jobs and the full number is likely higher. As a result, three other games that have been long-running staples of the studio will no longer get any updates. Smite, Paladins, and Rogue Company will have nobody to man the code cannons, so they’re being left to gather cobwebs from now on. Although they will remain playable.

“In light of challenging market conditions, Hi-Rez is implementing a reduction in force,” the studio said in a Discord message spotted by Dexerto. “Smite 2 will continue to be the focus of the newly streamlined operations. These reductions should enable a steady flow of new content and the continued development of Smite 2, while aligning team costs with revenues.”

Hi-Rez haven’t stated the exact number of people they’ve axed from the workplace. But a Reddit megathread of workers affected includes 23 people at the time of writing, while Smite YouTuber “Hayzer” estimates 50-60 people have been hit. Among those hit are programmers, UI artists, QA folk, marketing people, and producers – a full grab-bag of roles.

This comes just four months after the last round of job cuts at the company, which itself followed a round of cuts in June 2023 (that one saw around 30 people made unemployed). All these emnployees have been shown the door to give Smite 2 “sustainability”, according to Hi-Rez management. The CEO of Hi-Rez, Stewart Chisam, deleted his social media account on X in the aftermath of this week’s layoffs.

As for all the non-Smite 2 games, the studio is still keeping Paladins up even if it won’t see any further updates. “We plan to keep the servers and currently available content running as long as possible to allow you to continue to enjoy the game,” they say. The first Smite will get the same treatment for now. The previous layoffs saw these two games being staffed by “small teams supporting light updates”. But now it seems even those small teams are not wanted by the company.

I’m no business bro, but things don’t look good for Hi-Rez in general. Aside from the continuing self-bleeding of talent from the studio, they’ve now gone all-in on a MOBA that frankly isn’t that exciting according to our reviewer Matt (RPS in peace), who noted that Valve’s Deadlock is already halfway up its own lanes and looking quite beefy.

It continues to be a hard few years for workers in the games industry. We keep a tag that tracks recent layoffs. But to be honest, it’s hard to catch and report on them all. Especially when companies like BioWare refuse to speak in plain language about their job cuts.