Gaming-focused social platform Discord is laying off 17% of its staff, making it the latest in a relentless wave of layoffs sweeping the industry, as reported by The Verge.
IGN has confirmed with Discord that The Verge's report is accurate. Per the report, Discord employees learned of the lost jobs via a companywide meeting and internal memo. CEO Jason Citron says the cuts, which will affect 170 people across the business, are being made in an attempt to “sharpen our focus and improve the way we work together to bring more agility to our organization.”
“Today we are making the unfortunate and difficult decision to reduce the size of Discord’s workforce by 17%,” Citron’s memo says. “This means we are saying goodbye to 170 of our talented colleagues. This is a decision we did not take lightly, but it is one that we have conviction in to better serve our users, our business and our mission over the long term.”
The memo goes on to explain that the business has to “face some hard truths,” which include the fact that it has grown by five times since 2020. It adds, “As a result, we took on more projects and became less efficient in how we operated.”
Discord is offering affected staff “a sizable runway” as they are removed from rosters, which includes five months of salary (as well as additional pay for each full year served), five months of benefit continuation, access to Modern Health through 2024, and more. The entire reported memo can be read at The Verge.
The new year is off to a rocky start in the games industry after an already rough 2023. Earlier this week, we learned of cuts at livestream platform Twitch, which will affect 500 members of its team. Unity was also recently hit with sizeable cuts, which affected around 25% of its workforce.
This story has been updated to reflect Discord's confirmation of the layoffs.
Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He started writing in the industry in 2017 and is best known for his work at outlets such as The Pitch, The Escapist, OnlySP, and Gameranx.
Be sure to give him a follow on Twitter @MikeCripe.
