Skydance has begun laying off staff across its games division, about a month after closing its $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. Insider Gaming reports at least 30 people were let go, with the real number believed to be higher. Skydance has not commented on the cuts.
The layoffs have so far hit staff who worked for Skydance before the deal, at Paramount Games and Skydance Interactive, rather than the Warner Bros. Games studios that joined in the merger. Paramount Games associate design director David Ballard confirmed on LinkedIn that he was laid off. Skydance Interactive senior gameplay programmer Rebecca Vessal said most of her team was let go. Paramount Games engineer David Vera, who was not laid off, named 25 impacted colleagues and said Skydance “lost a ton of great talent.”
The cuts land on the newly unified Skydance Games, which brings Paramount Games, Skydance Interactive, and Warner Bros. Games together under one roof. That puts NetherRealm, the Mortal Kombat studio, Rocksteady, the Batman: Arkham studio, Avalanche Software, the Hogwarts Legacy studio, and TT Games, the studio behind the Lego games, in the same division as the teams that were cut. Tony Driscoll is president of games and experiences for the combined group.
The merger itself moved fast. Paramount and Skydance’s gaming divisions merged in July to become Paramount Games Studios, and the whole group became Skydance Games once the $110 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery closed. An internal FAQ told staff that business units such as Warner Bros. Games would keep their own brand identities inside the combined division.
The layoffs were flagged from the start. In their Day 1 memo to staff, Skydance CEO David Ellison and co-CEO Ynon Kreiz warned that combining the two companies would mean job cuts, and the company is targeting more than $6 billion in annual cost savings within three years. In late October, Skydance also introduced a five-day-a-week in-office mandate and a voluntary buyout program. Vertical Slice first reported the games layoffs on Nov 7, and Aftermath and The Escapist have since corroborated them through LinkedIn posts from affected staff.
Warner Bros. Games has been through this before. In February 2025 it closed Monolith Productions, Player First Games, and Warner Bros. Games San Diego.
For players, no project cancellations have been announced, and no staff from the Warner Bros. Games studios appear affected so far, so the games people are waiting on are not directly hit yet. But the cuts add uncertainty to unannounced projects inside a division that now holds some of the biggest franchises in games, in a year when deal-making has already reshaped the industry. More detail may come on Skydance’s third-quarter earnings call at 5 PM ET today, its first since the deal closed.
