In October, Skydance CEO David Ellison (née Paramount Skydance) and co-CEO Ynon Kreiz (née Mattel) announced layoffs would be coming following the company's acquisition of Warner Brothers. Those layoffs appear to have begun in the oft-unmentioned games portion of the company, with reports and LinkedIn posts indicating that employees who were initially part of Skydance Interactive or Paramount Games have been laid off.
A LinkedIn post by Rebecca Vessal, a senior gameplay and game AI programmer who was not affected, says that "[m]ost of my game team at Skydance Interactive got laid off today." A post on LinkedIn from Paramount Games engineer David Vera lists numerous affected designers, artists, engineers, and writers. "Skydance just lost a ton of great talent yesterday," wrote Vera, who was not affected. "The Skydance crew wasn't let go because of performance or problematic behaviors. These are all extremely worthy folks who were pushing themselves to the limit to try to make something they could all be proud of." Insider Gaming reports that at least 30 people have been affected, but it doesn't appear that WB staffers are among them at this time.
Paramount and Skydance's gaming divisions merged in July to become Paramount Games Studios, and the whole thing merged with Warner Brothers' stable to become Skydance Games once Skydance's $110 billion purchase of WB went through after a contentious process. That combined group is overseen by president of games and experiences Tony Driscoll, who previously oversaw Fortnite's creator economy before joining Skydance in 2024.
In late October, Skydance instituted a five-days-a-week in-office mandate, as well as a voluntary buyout program.
Ever since Netflix first showed interest in buying WB in late 2025 (and which it was ultimately outbid on by Skydance), the fate of the various games studios all these companies own has been in question. Neither company mentioned games much during their processes. Skydance seems most interested in WB's big series and the media tie-in possibilities, with Driscoll highlighting Batman (a game series overseen by WB's Rocksteady) when announcing the games merger, and Ellison and Kreiz highlighting Hogwarts Legacy and Mortal Kombat in their October memo. Vertical Slice reported that the studios would "retain their own brand identit[ies]."
Nothing good was ever going to come to the worker side once the acquisition went through, as numerous unions made clear. I doubt this is the last layoffs we'll see in Skydance's games division as the company figures out what it's trying to do in the space.
