Team17 is reportedly planning ‘significant’ job losses

Team17 is reportedly planning “significant” job losses as part of a company restructure.

According to a report by Eurogamer, the Worms, Overcooked and Moving Out publisher held an emergency town hall meeting today to inform staff of its plans.

The publisher told staff that its planned company restructure would include outsourcing its QA work to an external company. This would therefore affect most of the existing Team17 internal QA department, with around 50 roles at risk.

According to the proposed team structure document, most of the job losses will be junior QA analyst roles, though the report says it’s not clear which other departments will also be affected.

It’s said that a consultation process on the restructure has now started, and will end in November.

The report also says Michael Pattison is set to step down as CEO of Team17’s publishing arm, a role he took on in October 2021.

Earlier this year it was already confirmed that Debbie Bestwick, the CEO of Team17 Group, was also planning to step down, a move expected to take place on January 1, 2024.

This is the latest in a stream of mass layoffs taking place across the games industry this year. Last week it was announced that Epic Games would be laying off 16% of its staff, consisting of “around 830 employees”.

Earlier this year Microsoft confirmed plans to lay off approximately 10,000 employees, including some at Xbox and Bethesda.

CD Projekt Red also announced plans in July to lay off around 10% of its staff, with CD Projekt CEO Adam Kiciński stating that the company wants to have “teams that are more agile and more effective”.

Layoffs have also recently been occurring at a number of other companies, including Unity, Riot Games, Blizzard, Crystal Dynamics, Bioware and The Callisto Protocol studio Striking Distance.

Further reading

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Analysis: Why are video game companies laying off staff?

While it's been a bleak month for video games, overall the industry is in remarkably good health

In a recent analysis for VGC, GamesIndustry.biz’s Christopher Dring suggested that the widespread layoffs could partly be attributed to companies expecting to maintain momentum following the pandemic, but saw game sales that were lower than expected.

Last year Team17 announced plans to partner with a blockchain company to sell “potentially quite valuable” NFTs based on its Worms series of games.

The move resulted in widespread backlash from the publisher’s partner studios, resulting in Team17 swiftly cancelling its plans.