After 1 Billion Downloads, Fruit Ninja Developer Is Cutting Staff

Mobile game developer Halfbrick, the Australian studio behind the popular smartphone game Fruit Ninja, has made as many as 30 staffers redundant. That comes out to around half of the Brisbane-based studio's total workforce. This is all according to a report today from GameSpot sister site CNET, which heard the news from multiple sources. These sources told CNET that Halfbrick now has a total staff of fewer than 30 people.

Fruit Ninja, a free-to-play game that was originally released in 2010, has been downloaded more than 1 billion times. The game supports itself with microtransactions, as many free-to-play games do.

It hasn't exactly been smooth sailing for Halfbrick of late. In 2015, the company reportedly laid off all of its design developers as part of a major shakeup that saw the company shifting from creating new games to supporting its existing ones. In addition to Fruit Ninja, Halfbrick created Jetpack Joy Ride, which also proved to be immensely popular.

More redundancies are reportedly coming at Halfbrick later this week. We'll report back with more details as they come to light. Go to CNET to get the full story.

Fruit Ninja came to console in the form of Fruit Ninja Kinect, and later Fruit Ninja Kinect 2. A VR version of the game was released for HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and PlayStation VR.

A movie based on Fruit Ninja is currently in the works at film giant New Line, though we have not heard much about it recently.

In addition to Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride, Halfbrick developed games like Fish Out of Water, Age of Zombies, Dan the Man, and Monster Dash, among others.