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All 36 employees of Humble Games publishing have reportedly been laid off. According to business developer Nicola Kwan, staff were informed at 9am this morning, and told that “the company is shutting down.” Humble dispute this in a statement made to Game Developer, claiming that the publishing label is “undergoing restructuring,” as opposed to a full shutdown.
Humble’s statement – which you can read in full here – attributes the events to “challenging economic times for indie game publishing,” saying that “Humble Games has made the difficult but necessary decision to restructure our operations.”
Humble Games is operated by Ziff Davis, who also own the Gamer Network stable of websites, including Rock Paper Shotgun.
Chris Radley, who was Humble’s creative lead up until 2022, is among those who are publicly disputing this framing. “I want it to be made abundantly clear,” wrote Radley. “this is NOT a restructuring of operations. This is a total shutdown of HumbleGames. Operations have been handed off to a third party consultancy. NO staff are left.”
Speaking to Aftermath, an unnamed employee called the ‘restructuring’ claims an effort to “save face.” Aftermath report that former employees told them that Humble Games had not signed any projects for 2026 or 2027. “With [parent company Ziff Davis’s] stock going down, they simply decided they did not want to be in that business anymore. Their decision was not rational and will really hurt indie development in the long run, on top of their employees and the project in development,” said one anonymous employee.
Aftermath also obtained a recording of the morning meeting, in which Ziff Davis’ technology and shopping division president Steve Horowitz said that the company had attempted to sell Humble Games twice before, but “neither attempt created significant demand, and unfortunately neither attempt created a viable offer or an outcome.” Horowitz also said that Humble’s remaning publishing projects are being handed over a third-party consulting firm the Powell Group.
Humble Games, a publishing label under The Humble Bundle brand, has put out games including Signalis, Forager, Slay The Spire, and most recently Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus.
As Game Developer point out, this is Humble Games’s second round of layoffs in recent months, following the firing of an “unspecified number of staff from its publishing arm” last November.
“Another year, another lay off! Today is mine and my entire team’s last day at Humble Games,” wrote Senior QA Emilee Kieffer. “The game industry is volatile, it’s been inundated by people who only want exponential growth at the expense of making great games with great teams. Billionaires and CEOs are making record profits at the expense of the employees who actually create the products. But I believe we have the power to create studios that benefit us as game developers and not people that only see us as money printing machines.”