In October, Skydance CEO David Ellison (née Paramount Skydance) and co-CEO Ynon Kreiz (née Mattel) introduced layoffs would be coming following the corporate’s acquisition of Warner Brothers. These layoffs seem to have begun within the oft-unmentioned video games portion of the corporate, with experiences and LinkedIn posts indicating that workers who had been initially a part of Skydance Interactive or Paramount Video games have been laid off.
A LinkedIn post by Rebecca Vessal, a senior gameplay and sport AI programmer who was not affected, says that “[m]ost of my sport group at Skydance Interactive acquired laid off immediately.” A post on LinkedIn from Paramount Video games engineer David Vera lists quite a few affected designers, artists, engineers, and writers. “Skydance simply misplaced a ton of nice expertise yesterday,” wrote Vera, who was not affected. “The Skydance crew wasn’t let go due to efficiency or problematic behaviors. These are all extraordinarily worthy people who had been pushing themselves to the restrict to attempt to make one thing they may all be happy with.” Insider Gaming experiences that at the very least 30 folks have been affected, nevertheless it would not seem that WB staffers are amongst them right now.
Paramount and Skydance’s gaming divisions merged in July to develop into Paramount Video games Studios, and the entire thing merged with Warner Brothers’ secure to develop into Skydance Games as soon as Skydance’s $110 billion purchase of WB went by way of after a contentious process. That mixed group is overseen by president of video games and experiences Tony Driscoll, who beforehand oversaw Fortnite‘s creator economic system earlier than becoming a member of Skydance in 2024.
In late October, Skydance instituted a five-days-a-week in-office mandate, as well as a voluntary buyout program.
Ever since Netflix first confirmed curiosity in shopping for WB in late 2025 (and which it was ultimately outbid on by Skydance), the destiny of the assorted video games studios all these firms personal has been in query. Neither firm talked about video games a lot throughout their processes. Skydance appears most curious about WB’s huge sequence and the media tie-in prospects, with Driscoll highlighting Batman (a sport sequence overseen by WB’s Rocksteady) when asserting the video games merger, and Ellison and Kreiz highlighting Hogwarts Legacy and Mortal Kombat of their October memo. Vertical Slice reported that the studios would “retain their very own model identit[ies].”
Nothing good was ever going to come back to the employee facet as soon as the acquisition went by way of, as numerous unions made clear. I doubt that is the final layoffs we’ll see in Skydance’s video games division as the corporate figures out what it is attempting to do within the house.