'Fruit Ninja' Developer Is Cutting Down Staff; Studio Now Reportedly Down to Around 30 People
"Fruit Ninja," an immensely popular mobile game that has tallied over one billion downloads, is apparently not enough to salvage developer Halfbrick Studios who is now reportedly laying off its workforce. According to reports, the studio is letting go of 30 staff members, which is about half of what remains of the company at this point.
That leaves roughly 30 members left to support Halfbrick's existing catalog of games as of Monday, March 12, according to sources confiding to CNet. The studio has been struggling this year, a situation far removed from the time when Halfbrick was a key figure in Australia's gaming industry with the breakout success of "Fruit Ninja," and later, "Jetpack Joyride."
The company, which has since then made other games including "Dan the Man," "Radical Rappelling," "Bears vs. Art," "Colossatron," "Monster Dash," "Age of Zombies," and "Fish Out of Water," has since then been trying to pull off the same level of success, to no avail.
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That was despite Halfbrick and Google celebrating 1 Billion "Fruit Ninja" downloads just three years ago, in 2015. "Fruit Ninja" is a game that is free to download and play for mobile, and the studio has been dependent on microtransactions to earn revenue, as is the usual strategy for free mobile games.
Later that year, Halfbrick has reportedly laid off all its designers, a part of its new shift from designing and developing games to leaning on its successful titles in an effort to focus on "Fruit Ninja" and "Jetpack Joyride," as Kotaku noted at the time.
"Money changes everything," one of the sources noted back in 2015, while another added that "creative risk taking is a thing of the past."
It turns out, it's been a strategy shift that's not working out too well for Halfbrick. The studio is yet to issue a comment as of this time.
