GOG just laid off a dozen employees

For the last couple of weeks, the gaming community has been raging about the mass layoffs of Activision employees amid the report that the company had record revenue. Recently, Kotaku reported that online game store GOG, owned by CD Projekt (the publisher of “The Witcher” game series), laid off “a dozen” employees.

A person who contacted Kotaku about the layoffs indicated that GOG has been under financial strains for while.

When Kotaku reached out for a statement, GOG representative confirmed the about the layoffs.

We have been rearranging certain teams since October 2018, effecting in closing around a dozen of positions last week. At the same time, since the process started we have welcomed nearly twice as many new team members, and currently hold 20 open positions.

Another person, who was laid off by GOG, told that the store had bad performance in February and the management apparently decided to jump the gun.

I mean, it’s just an odd situation, like things got really desperate really fast. I know that February was a really bad month, but January, on the other hand, was excellent. We were in the middle of a general restructuring, moving some teams around, not unprecedented. But layoffs that big have never happened before.”

GOG must be feeling additional pressure with Epic Store setting the 12% margin on the games as opposed to the 30% which used to be the market normal. Now there is little to none incentive for publishers to work with GOG even if they decide to avoid Steam.