Niantic has made 68 employees redundant as part of its company restructuring process following the sale of its gaming portfolio to Monopoly Go maker Scopely – a deal worth $3.5bn.
The deal has seen Scopely become owner of Niantic games Pokémon Go, Monster Hunter Now and Pikmin Bloom, and the new employer of the teams that work on those titles. As previously announced, all employees working on those games remain in their posts.
These layoffs, meanwhile, come from the remaining staff at Niantic working on other projects, as the organisation slims down and effectively rebrands as a startup, named Niantic Spatial.
Niantic had previously warned of job losses among its remaining team as part of this process. Now, as detailed in a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) spotted by Game Developer, we know how many.
The company has declined to comment further about the job losses.
Niantic Spatial will focus on a refreshed version of Niantic’s original core interest – creating a digital map of the planet, now using geospatial AI. The newly-rebranded company has secured $250m of capital investment, $50m from Scopely and $200m from Niantic’s own balance sheet in order to move forward.