Gaming Studios Are Already Shutting in 2025

2025 has already brought layoffs to the video game industry, with three studios shuttering for good.  

The studios closing are Toadman Interactive, Freejam and Counterplay Games.

Theses studios developed titles such as third-person shooter ‘Immortal: Unchained’ and hero defense game ‘Bloodsports TV’. The studio also offered support on games including ‘The Lord of the Rings Online’ and ‘MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries’, ‘Robocraft 2’ and ‘Godfall’.

Toadman’s parent company Enad Global 7 put out a statement: “This decision does not come lightly and follows several initiatives to turn the subsidiary profitable, including the cost-saving measures executed last year. Ongoing Work-for-Hire (WFH) contracts with Daybreak and Cold Iron will be protected in this process, this means that a complete closure of activities will be optimized to fulfill the contract’s deliverables.

“This will have an immediate effect on all employees not engaged in these contracts.”

The company also announced that 38 employee at Piranha Games will also be laid off, after the Mechwarrior series “performed below epectations”.

Freejam wrote on its Discord server that it will be sunsetting ‘Robocraft 2’, its predecessor, and CardLife’ “over the coming weeks”.

Counterplay Games revealed that the studio was “disbanded” in December 2024, after the partnership it had with Jackalyptic Games finished.

A Jackalyptic Games employee said in a LinkedIn post “Unfortunately we were unable to continue our partnership into the new year and CPG was disbanded.”

This is already a devastating start to an industry that has seen thousands of layoffs across 2023 and 2024, and doesn’t look like it will be slowing down anytime soon.