Wooga closes office in Japan

The authors of Jelly Splash have not had the most successful year. After the dismissal of 40 employees and the dissolution of Black Anvil Games, the company closes the Tokyo office.

The Japanese division of Wooga was the first international office of the company. He was responsible for establishing links with local studios and localization itself. It was headed by Jun Otsuka from Sega.

“Unfortunately, the fate of this office was influenced by a change in our strategy in favor of working only on casual games,” explains Wooga’s closure in its press release.

Recall that 40 people (about 10% of the company’s employees) were fired in connection with the restructuring of Wooga, which decided to build work by creating three internal studios, each of which works exclusively on its genre: puzzle, hidden or simulator.

As part of these large-scale layoffs, Black Anvil Games, which was developing midcore products, was also closed. The worldwide release of her Warlords game took place just during the dissolution of the team.

The focus exclusively on casual projects in the company itself was explained by the fact that the approaches to the development of midcore games are completely different. We decided not to spray.

Sources: PocketGamer, GamesIndustry, Develop