The bad news continues this week for animation, vfx, and video game studios. Just one day after Technicolor and its various studios imploded and Montreal’s On Animation Studios shut down, Warner Bros. Discovery announced without warning that it is shutting down three video game development studios.
The three Warner Bros. Games companies being shuttered are Monolith Productions, Player First Games, and Warner Bros. Games San Diego. It is not immediately clear how many people will be laid off, but the number is likely in the hundreds.
“The quality of too many of our new releases has really missed the mark,” JB Perrette, WBD’s CEO and president of global streaming and games, wrote in a memo that was obtained by Bloomberg. “We need to make some substantial changes to our portfolio/team structure if we are to commit the necessary resources to get back to a ‘fewer but bigger franchises’ strategy.”
Warner Bros. CEO David Zaslav had recently said that the company’s game division will shift its focus to just four core franchises: Hogwarts Legacy, Mortal Kombat, Game of Thrones, and DC’s Batman.
Monolith Productions, based in Kirkland, Washington, was founded in 1994 and acquired by Warner Bros. Games in 2004. It was known for titles like Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, F.E.A.R., and Blood, and it was developing a Wonder Woman video game, which has now been canceled.
Los Angeles-based Player First Games was acquired by Warner Bros. only last year. The company developed WBD’s free-to-play platform fighter game Multiversus. In a recent earnings call, WB execs said that the company recorded a nearly $100-million impairment charge due to the poor performance of Multiversus.
Warner Bros. Games San Diego was founded in 2019. It is not known what titles the division was working on at the time of closure.
The shutdown of these three studios follows other reductions throughout WB Games. A couple months ago, in December, it was revealed that WB Games Montreal was laying off nearly 100 workers. Following the closure of these units, WBD still owns at least nine video game studios.
Warner Bros. will report fourth-quarter earnings this Thursday, at which time it will likely shed more light on its video game strategy moving forward.
