TMNT: The Last Ronin Game Developer Lays Off 50% of Studio

The developer working on the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin game has laid off a significant portion of its staff. Over the last year or so, the video game industry has experienced a ton of turmoil. Major companies across the industry have laid off significant amounts of staff and it has caused a lot of concern over the sustainability of the industry. Major developers like Epic Games, Bungie, and more have all laid off large numbers of employees for a variety of reasons. Some of these companies have gone through rounds of lay offs as a result of overexpanding during COVID, others have had issues with profitability and overall financial performance, and more. It was even reported a month ago that PlayStation was looking into cutting a significant number of employees from Insomniac Games in the near future, despite the fact that Marvel's Spider-Man 2 is PlayStation's fastest selling exclusive and has sold very well. Part of this may be because the budgets for games these days are so incredibly high that even games that sell "well" may not generate "enough" revenue.

With that said, the latest studio to announce layoffs is Black Forest Games, the developer working on the highly anticipated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game, The Last Ronin. It's expected to be a darker, more mature Ninja Turtles game based on one of the most acclaimed comics from the IP. It's the kind of game that a lot of fans have longed for. The game is expected to still be a few years away from releasing and unfortunately, Black Forest Games has been hit with layoffs. Roughly 50% of the studio has been laid off, according to Kotaku. The studio had a headcount of 110 employees in 2023 and about 50 people were laid off on January 24th. As of right now, reasons are unknown, but information is expected to come next week.

Black Forest Games has been around for a little over a decade, getting it start making platformers and smaller budget games. It eventually got recognized for its remakes of the cult-classic action/adventure games, Destroy All Humans. The two remakes were received decently, though didn't blow critics away. It's unclear how they performed sales-wise, but clearly Black Forest Games proved itself capable enough to earn itself a crack at adapting a beloved Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic.