The home of Lara Croft is cutting even more staff in its fourth round of layoffs in just a year. Crystal Dynamics recently revealed Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis and Tomb Raider: Catalyst at The Game Awards 2025 and promises they’ll both remain unaffected even as AAA gaming continues to struggle.
The studio announced on March 18 that it was cutting 20 people across “some development personnel and some central operations roles.” That’s in addition to 30 people laid off last November, an unspecified number cut last August, and 17 people let go last March.
“As our current projects move into new phases of development, we continuously take a hard look at our team structures to ensure they align with our long-term studio goals,” the company wrote on LinkedIn. “While we always strive to transition our people into new roles whenever possible, we have unfortunately reached a point where these departures are necessary.”
Crystal Dynamics, which is also known for 2020’s live-service fumble Marvel’s Avengers, had a headcount of 273 back in 2022. It’s since faced multiple rounds of downsizing amid mismanagement at parent company Embracer and Microsoft’s cancelation of Perfect Dark last year, which the studio was co-developing at the time with The Initiative.
The group is currently working to ship Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, an Unreal Engine 5 remake of the original 1996 hit, and Tomb Raider: Catalyst, a new entry in the series that aims to take the action-adventure puzzle formula into a more open-world format. While the remake is scheduled to launch later this year, Catalyst has been in development for several years and still doesn’t have a firm release date beyond 2027.
“We know that news like this can cause concern amongst our community. Crystal Dynamics remains fully committed to the future development of our already announced Tomb Raider titles,” the studio wrote on Wednesday. “Today, however, our priority is supporting our colleagues who are moving on.”
Both blockbusters are being published by Amazon Game Studios, which recently ditched its AAA gaming ambitions as it retreats to low-cost party games. Amazon has said it remains committed to publishing the games though it’s no longer clear where that fits in its larger portfolio of gaming projects. The tech giant is also developing a Tomb Raider TV series for Amazon Prime.
