Kotaku reports that GOG.com "quietly" laid off a dozen staff last week from
the DRM-free online store owned by CD Projekt RED. They've confirmed the report,
saying GOG.com tells them this was part of "rearranging certain teams," and that
they have also been adding staff with 20 positions still open. This is a stark
contrast to what they're told by one of the affected former staff, who tells
them the company is in financial trouble:
One person who was laid off
from GOG last week offered a different perspective, saying that laid-off staff
were told that this was a move made by a company in dire straits. That person
estimated that the layoffs had hit 10% of GOG’s staff.
“We were told it’s a financial decision,” that person told me in an online
message. “GOG’s revenue couldn’t keep up with growth, the fact that we’re
dangerously close to being in the red has come up in the past few months, and
the market’s move towards higher [developer] revenue shares has, or will, affect
the bottom line as well. I mean, it’s just an odd situation, like things got
really desperate really fast. I know that February was a really bad month, but
January on the other hand was excellent. We were in the middle of a general
restructuring, moving some teams around, not unprecedented. But layoffs that big
have never happened before.”