Summary
- Hi-Rez Studios laid off its president and other senior managers to address workforce challenges according to Alex Cantatore.
- Previous layoffs impacted lower-level developers, but this time it's executives that were affected.
- Cutbacks won't change focus on Smite 2, with regular updates planned despite management changes.
Smite 2 developer Hi-Rez Studios has laid off its president and several other people in senior management roles in its latest round of cutbacks. The company has faced several workforce challenges over the past year, forcing leadership to make some difficult decisions, and now those decisions have come for leadership themselves. In a break from industry norms, Hi-Rez Studios' most recent layoffs haven't come for lower-level developers but executives.
Unfortunately, this is not the first workforce reduction the Smite 2 team has faced this year. In February, Hi-Rez let go of up to 70 employees as it slowed ongoing work on Paladins and Rogue Company to focus on Smite 2. The exact number of employees affected by those layoffs is still unclear, but it was enough to stir up backlash to the point where then-president Stewart Chisam deactivated his Twitter account.
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Rumors of the most recent layoffs spread around social media before being confirmed by Alex Cantatore, an executive producer at Hi-Rez, in the comments on a Reddit post about the matter. According to Cantatore, the board had determined that there were too many senior managers at the company for its size. Considering how the Smite 2 studio laid off employees in October 2024 before doing so again in February 2025, it's easy to see how the team may have shrunk over the past year. In response, Hi-Rez has let go of Chisam, executive producer Travis Brown, another manager who goes by "Radar," and "two folks in senior management on the RallyHere side."
Hi-Rez Studios Lets Go of Five Upper-Level Leaders as Company Shrinks
Cantatore says that the cutbacks don't represent a change in vision for the company. The team plans to continue focusing on Smite 2, aiming to bring one to two new gods to the game each week, as it has been lately. Earlier this year, Smite 2 switched to a seasonal system to reward players with regularly updated content, and it seems the executive shake-up won't affect that going forward. The player experience should remain largely unchanged, as Cantatore assured that the layoffs don't impact anyone else directly working on the game or their mission statement.
While Smite 2 fans may be able to breathe easy about the future of the game, the layoffs continue an unfortunately persistent trend in the gaming industry. Recently, Bulletstorm studio People Can Fly announced layoffs of its own. Microsoft, Playtonic, Codemasters, and Respawn Entertainment have all faced staff cutbacks this year, too. It's a tough industry to survive in, and not even the executive suite is safe, as this news from Hi-Rez shows.
- Date Founded
- 2005
- Headquarters
- Alpharetta, Georgia
- Subsidiaries
- Evil Mojo Games
- Known For
- Smite