There was not good news in the gaming development community and as incredible as its sound was, after years of success with Pokémon Go, the AR gaming and content studio Niantic ran a layoff this week.

As per Kotaku, Niantic let go of 230 and had access to an internal email explaining why the layoff was needed, by company CEO John Hanke.

Basically, it is like the rest of the tech industry, that things went smoother and biggert due the pandemic but revenue was not resonant with this new stream of opportunity (and in my opinion, many companies believed that the pandemic was for a long run).

The increase of competition was another reason and some products not meeting goals like the NBA All-World game and also, this has led to internally canceling the upcoming Marvel: World of Heroes title.

Hanke assures that plan are now driven to make Pokémon Go as main project and make it possible to be a “forever game” meanwhile, new plans need to be follow straight to the line to avoid more situations like this and  continue to work on existing titles like Pikmin Bloom, Monster Hunter Now and Peridot, but Hanke warns that the studio has “a lot of work to do” to keep player retention, revenue and profitability on these games.