Angry Birds developer pushes through new layoffs

Finnish game developer Rovio, best known for Angry Birds, is going to cut another 260 jobs. The company announced this in a statement about a reorganization. The layoffs affect the entire company, except for the makers of a film about Angry Birds.

Rovio states that it wants to focus on three areas with a smaller, more agile organization: games, media and consumer products. After the success of Angry Birds, the company quickly grew to more than 800 employees and the main franchise was used for many more products than just the game. “As a result, we did too much,” admits CEO Pekka Rantala.

The team working on the Angry Birds animated film, including Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage, is being spared the dismissal round. Rovio recently released Angry Birds 2, a game that got 50 million downloads in one month. This makes the game not as popular as the first version, which received numerous spin-offs such as Star Wars and Transformers. The decline in popularity resulted in a 75 percent drop in turnover in 2014. Rovio was forced to cut 130 jobs last year.