Another Round Of Layoffs Hits 2K Games

2K Games has laid off an unknown number of developers at Visual Concepts, the studio behind games such as NBA 2K and Lego 2K Drive.

"Well... the games industry bloodletting continues. Today Visual Concepts Austin laid off myself and a group of very talented developers," said former art manager Brad Bowling on LinkedIn. "I have had a great time over the past couple of years working with some of the finest game devs in the industry. Over the past 23 years of making game art, I have seen some downturns but nothing like this."

This is the latest round of layoffs Visual Concepts conducted in less than a year. Back in September 2023, Visual Concepts laid off several developers from its production, design, and quality assurance departments, including executive producer Joseph Cowan.

2K has also recently laid off staff at some of its other studios, such as XCOM developer Firaxis last year. 31st Union, which was initially founded in 2019 as 2K Silicon Valley, conducted layoffs just last month, even before shipping its first game.

The video game industry saw massive layoffs in 2023 and it shows no signs of slowing down in 2024, with more than 6,000 developers having been laid off so far this year.