Key Notes
- Rovio confirmed 20 job cuts at Ruby Games, while a small team will continue operating the studio’s existing mobile titles.
- Ruby will move away from new games as its owner concentrates resources on the Angry Birds franchise.
- The studio’s website lists more than 30 staff, but Rovio has not disclosed the exact headcount remaining after the cuts.
Rovio has cut 20 jobs at Ruby Games, leaving a small team to keep the Turkish studio’s existing mobile games running as the Angry Birds maker narrows its priorities. The company confirmed the layoffs to Mobilegamer.biz, saying Ruby will remain open.
The change moves the İzmir-based developer away from making new games and toward supporting its catalog, which includes Hunter Assassin, Beauty Care and My Tidy Life. For players, Rovio’s stated plan is continued operation of those titles, rather than a studio shutdown.
A Smaller Team for Existing Games
Rovio said challenging market conditions had made it necessary to focus on Angry Birds. It is offering the affected employees outplacement support to help them find other work.
“The studio is not being closed,” a spokesperson told Mobilegamer.biz. That commitment preserves Ruby’s name and ongoing operations, but the reduction sharply limits the work the remaining team will take on.
Ruby’s website describes a staff of more than 30 people spanning game design, engineering, publishing, growth, analytics and product management. That listing gives a sense of the scale of 20 departures, although it is not a dated headcount immediately before the layoffs. Rovio has not provided an exact number for the team that will remain.
The studio’s existing description covers much more than maintenance: it presents Ruby as both a developer and publisher, with the people and tools to select, create and launch games. The new arrangement substantially reduces that remit.
A Change From Rovio’s Expansion Plans
The decision is a marked change from the case Rovio made when it announced the Ruby acquisition in August 2021. At the time, the Finnish company described the purchase as its entry into the hyper-casual market: mobile games built around quick, easily understood play sessions.
Rovio said Ruby’s portfolio had already exceeded 600 million downloads and that Hunter Assassin had ranked as the world’s sixth most-downloaded game in 2020. It wanted the acquisition to broaden its audience and offer players a more varied selection of games.
The announcement also highlighted Ruby’s network of developers and its ability to release successful titles. Founder and chief executive Mert Can Kurum was to continue leading the business from İzmir.
Five years later, Rovio’s explanation for the cuts points in the opposite direction: concentrating resources on its established Angry Birds franchise while retaining only the capacity needed to operate Ruby’s existing games.
Ruby’s Catalog Continues
Ruby’s own history traces its move into self-publishing to May 2019, after working with several mobile publishers. The studio now advertises more than one billion lifetime downloads across its portfolio. Those are cumulative downloads, rather than a measure of the audience playing today.
The cuts follow another retrenchment at Rovio. Mobilegamer.biz reported in August that the company would close its Copenhagen operation after canceling Sonic Blitz.
Elsewhere in mobile development, we reported on the closure of Fortis Games, where up to 440 jobs were affected. Ruby’s situation has a different immediate outcome: its existing games retain a team, even as the studio loses the staff and mandate to pursue new releases.
