Skydance Games Lays Off Developers a Month After the Warner Bros. Merger

A Paramount Games lead engineer says at least 25 colleagues were let go as the company scales down some projects.

At least 25 people who make games for Skydance have lost their jobs, according to a LinkedIn post from one of the studio's lead engineers.

Video Games Chronicle reported the layoffs Tuesday, crediting TheWrap. TheWrap reported that David Vera, a lead engineer at Paramount Games, posted that at least 25 of his colleagues had been let go. Skydance hasn't confirmed a number, VGC said.

The cuts came just over a month after Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery closed their $110 billion merger, TheWrap reported, putting the two companies' game studios under one roof. The combined company now goes by Skydance.

The company explained the cuts in a statement to Variety on Monday. It's "implementing reorganization and operational shifts across a few areas of our business," a Skydance spokesperson said in a statement to Variety, and has "made the difficult decision to scale down some of our projects. As a result, there are roles impacted." The statement doesn't say which projects.

That's the part players will be squinting at. Paramount Games has two announced games: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin, which PlatinumGames is developing, and Star Trek: Shadow Frontier, a psychological thriller from Bloober Team, according to VGC. Skydance hasn't said whether either one is getting smaller.

The company has reorganized its games group twice this year. In June, Paramount Skydance set up Paramount Games Studio, combining Paramount and Skydance's gaming assets. Then on Oct. 6, Variety reported, NetherRealm, Rocksteady, TT Games and Hogwarts Legacy studio Avalanche Software joined it, along with the rest of the teams Warner Bros. Games owned outright. Tony Driscoll, who'd been running the Paramount studio since June, was promoted to lead the combined games and experiences unit.

The pressure comes from the top. Skydance wants to wring at least $6 billion in savings out of the merger, TheWrap reported, and new co-CEO Ynon Kreiz, Mattel's former CEO, is in charge of finding it. The day the deal closed, Kreiz and CEO David Ellison warned in writing that combining the two companies would mean hard calls about the workforce, according to TheWrap. Its story on the games cuts ran the same day Skydance released its first earnings report as a combined company.

Rebecca Vessel, a senior gameplay and game AI programmer at Skydance Games, said she wasn't among those laid off, VGC reported, citing TheWrap. Most of her team was.

Source: TheWrap, retrieved November 10, 2026. Other sources: Variety.