Angry Birds creator to lay off 130 employees
Angry Birds mobile game creator Rovio Entertainment will lay off 16% of its staff in Finland, the company announced on Thursday.
Official word of this decision, which will impact 130 employees, comes after the company revealed in August that Chief Executive Mikael Hed would be replaced by Nokia alum Pekka Rantala in January 2015.
Hed stated: “We have been building our team on assumptions of faster growth than have materialised.”
“As a result, we announced today that we plan to simplify our organisation around our three key businesses with the highest growth potential: games, media, and consumer products.”
“Unfortunately, we also need to consider possible employee reductions of a maximum of 130 people in Finland.”
Rovio Entertainment has struggled to compete with other game developers over the past couple of years. Its recently launched game, Stella, failed to reach the top 100 highest-grossing apps in the US on either the Google Play Store or Apple App Store.