Mighty Kingdom, the Adelaide-based game studio known for Conan Chop Chop, Ava’s Manor, and Power Rangers Mighty Force, is set to undergo a major restructure, including layoffs, as part of a review to “maximise efficiency” at the company.
The announcement was posted to the ASX on Monday (as surfaced by journalist Jack Ryan), alerting shareholders to inner company movements. As noted, the review process was made necessary by “continued industry headwinds” as well as a need to ensure sustainability of the studio, based around current “work for hire” contracts.
Mighty Kingdom noted “significant changes” would be made as part of this review, with the management structure being overhauled to better suit the business, and its existing contract base. Several senior management positions will be “collapsed” to ensure the structure is “more appropriate.”
Layoffs will result from this decisions, although the extent was not revealed in the ASX announcement. Rather, Mighty Kingdom referred to a “significant shift in overall staff numbers which will have a material effect on the overall cost base of the company.”
In short, staff will be laid off, pushing company expenses down. This would be the second round of layoffs to hit Mighty Kingdom, following reductions in mid-2024. In this round of layoffs, around 28% of employees lost their jobs.
Read: Mighty Kingdom is laying off 28% of its employees
Per Mighty Kingdom, the reduction of staff and collapse of senior management positions will not significantly impact the company’s ability to deliver on existing contracts. Work will continue, and the studio will remain open.
Those staff set to be laid off are reportedly now going through a “consultation and support process” and a further release will outline when this process has been completed, and how significantly it will impact the company’s bottom line.
With this announcement, Mighty Kingdom becomes just the latest Australian game studio to be impacted by overall economic downturn, and decline in the global games industry. In 2024, a number of other studios were impacted by changes, including League of Geeks (Armello, Solium Infernum), which announced an indefinite hiatus due to tough financial circumstances.
There’s likely much more to come from Mighty Kingdom, so stay tuned.