Mass layoffs have hit Mortal Kombat and Injustice developer NetherRealm Studios, according to reports by former workers on Thursday.
As spotted by TechRaptor, the layoffs seemed to mostly impact the mobile team. Among those affected was quality assurance (QA)analyst Tony Lazzara, who posted about the layoffs on LinkedIn, and also noted that the entire team had been shut down. He didn’t specify how many people were laid off or if it the layoffs were limited to just mobile, but said “a ton of very talented people were put out of work.” Another former NetherRealm QA analyst, Samantha Edward, posted that the move impacted “most of my colleagues” on the mobile side.
The team worked on 2023’s Mortal Kombat: Onslaught and Mortal Kombat Mobile. As TechRaptor pointed out, Mortal Kombat Mobile just received an update on Wednesday, adding comics character Spawn, other character variants, and new events. NetherRealm also continues to support its other titles. Mortal Kombat 1 just added Takeda Takahashi as a playable character, and it will be at the Evo games tournament, which kicks off this weekend.
It’s unclear if NetherRealm is exiting mobile entirely, or if this is all a consequence of losses at parent company Warner Bros. Games, due in part to Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League flopping. In March, division head J.B. Perrette said that it would be pivoting to focus on its more profitable IP, such as Hogwarts Legacy (and Harry Potter in general), along with MultiVersus. He also added that this includes live-service, free-to-play, and mobile games.
Neither NetherRealm nor Warner Bros. Games have made an official statement on the matter. Digital Trends reached out to NetherRealm Studios for comment and will update this story when we receive a response.
