Angry Birds maker Rovio is firing employees due to money problems, even though Angry Birds 2 is a hit.
The Finnish company is having serious troubles paying the bills and it’s going to cut approximately 260 jobs. This comes after a 110 employee lay-off in October of 2014.
When 2013 ended, the company had 800 employees.
News that Rovio is laying-off people comes as a huge surprise considering that their latest release is a big hit across the world.
Angry Birds 2 sits at 50 million downloads in one month. It has topped the charts in the U.S. App Store market and the Chinese one. Also, as you can see down below, Angry Birds 2 is sitting nicely in many other countries.
However, Angry Birds 2 is starting to fall in these charts. Sure, 50 million downloads is huge, but their freemium model isn’t working as the company expected.
For those of you who don’t know, freemium means that an app is basically free but it has an in-game currency which you can buy with real-world money. With in-game currency you acquire items that either let you use a spell more or unlock a certain part of the game early.
This model, even though highly popular, doesn’t seem to work for Rovio. Games like Candy Crush Saga, Candy Crush Soda Saga, Clash of Clans and Game of War are pummeling the top of the charts for months – all along using a freemium model.
Basically, Angry Birds 2 isn’t enough for the company to solely exist on. Rovio has expanded into Seoul and Tokyo, Shanghai and Vancouver, Los Angeles and New York City, London, and Stockholm. Their Espoo HQ is found in Finland.
This does not resemble your average indie game dev studio.
The Angry Birds franchise was one of the first to be a huge mobile hit. The likes of which were never seen before on the App Store and Play Store.
It quickly grew from a thousand people playing it to millions of users paying a few dollars just to download the latest title. Rovio’s Angry Birds is indeed designed for mobile gaming, but fans don’t like it that they moved towards the freemium model. Micro-transactions and waiting doesn’t mold well with the game itself.
Rovio makes additional money from Angry Birds merch. The company sells licensed materials, and they sell a ton from teddy bears to pens and notebooks.
But as it becomes less and less popular, those items could very well become irrelevant.
There is one last glimmer of hope for Rovio – The Angry Birds movie. They have been working on the movie for some time now and it’s expected to be released in May of 2016.
These lay-offs, Rovio says, will affect the whole company except the teams working on the movie. This is a huge risk that might determine the fate of the company. Let’s see if their play pans out!
