Clockmaker dev Belka Games lays off 20% of employees after revising its strategy

Belka Games has joined a growing list of studios that have conducted mass layoffs this year. The Cyprus-based mobile developer decided to cut several dozen workers.

Clockmaker

What happened?

• On April 26, at least 30 Belka Games employees updated their LinkedIn status to “Open to work,” with some posting messages about the situation. The studio’s lead narrative designer Alexander Pugachev also shared a partial list of his colleagues looking for a new job.
• Those affected included narrative designers, level designers, 2D artists, tech artists, community managers, programmers, community managers, and several team leads.
• Belka Games CEO Alexandr Bogdanov later confirmed the layoffs to App2Top, saying that “the company has revised its strategy, leading us to take a more critical view of our products. As a result, we have made the difficult decision to reduce our workforce by 20%.”
• “We are deeply thankful to everyone for their invaluable contribution to Belka Games, and we are using all our resources to help our team members find new career opportunities,” he continued. “The company plans to focus on developing new hits and to prepare for the next stage of growth.”
• It is unclear how many people were affected by this decision. Prior to the layoffs, Belka Games’ workforce exceeded 300, meaning that more than 60 employees likely lost their jobs.

Belka Games is struggling to grow revenue

Belka Games is best known for its match-3 title Clockmaker, which remains its most successful product with lifetime IAP revenue of nearly $290 million. Other top games by revenue include Solitaire Cruise ($76.5 million) and Funky Bay ($58.7 million).

Despite a strong portfolio, 2023 turned out to be a rough year for Belka. According to AppMagic, its monthly mobile revenue dropped to $5-6 million, a huge decline from its peak of $10-11 million in 2021.

Belka Games’ monthly revenue (blue) and downloads (red)

Judging by the download chart, the company started acquiring users in the second half of 2023, but the rise in installs didn’t lead to revenue growth.

After peaking at $6.5 million in December, its monthly IAP revenue fell to mid-2019 levels, or $4.6 million, in February.

Right now, Belka titles are generating around $120-150k per day, indicating that its April revenue could drop to $4 million.