Crystal Dynamics is undergoing another round of cuts. It revealed on Thursday that nearly 30 more developers would be laid off as the company restructures for the future. Specifically, it claimed the cuts were necessary to “optimize the continued development of our flagship Tomb Raider game.” The Amazon Games-backed project was announced three years ago and still no official details have been shared, though Kotaku understands its development has been challenging as Crystal Dynamics tried to push the franchise in the direction of an open-world experience.
The studio announced the layoffs on LinkedIn:
Today we’ve made the difficult but necessary decision to reorganize Crystal Dynamics’ studios and teams. As a result, we’ve parted ways with just under 30 team members across various departments and projects as we restructure the company and business for our next generation. Crystal deeply thanks all of those impacted for their incredible talent, hard work, and dedication, which helped shape the studio in so many ways. We are committed to offering our fullest resources and support to you during this transition.
To our players – as the realities of the industry continue to evolve, we’ve made these painful choices as a way to optimize the continued development of our flagship Tomb Raider game, as well as shaping the rest of the studio to make new games for the future.
We appreciate the continued support of our players, our colleagues, and our partners during this transition and look forward to sharing the team’s amazing new work with the world in the future.
It’s the third round of layoffs this year and comes only months after cuts that were made due to the Microsoft’s cancellation of Perfect Dark, which Crystal Dynamics was doing the bulk of development on. The Xbox stealth action game was reportedly almost revived under a new publisher, but the deal felt apart over IP rights.
The studio has been part of Embracer Group since it was sold by Square Enix as part of a $300 million package back in 2022. Its publishing partner for Tomb Raider, Amazon Games, recently underwent its own mass layoffs and announced it was taking a step back from certain internally developed AAA games. Crystal Dynamics’ latest budgetary pressures could possible be the result of Amazon pulling back on the deal.
