At the beginning of July, it was announced that 9,100 people would be laid off from Microsoft, and one studio that is said to be affected is Swedish King, which has a number of different offices but its headquarters are in Stockholm and London.
200 employees, or 10 percent, are said to be forced out of King. Now, there are particularly striking reports that employees who lose their jobs are being replaced by AI – which they helped create. This is according to a report from Mobilegamer.biz that spoke to anonymous employees.
Many have been given notice of termination and others have found out that their jobs are at risk. An anonymous source says that it is “crazy” that the affected people helped pick new tools, which will now replace them. “Disgusting” behavior, especially when the company is doing well.
Most of the level design team has been removed, which is crazy considering that they have spent months building tools to create levels faster. Now those AI tools are basically replacing the entire team. Similarly, the copywriting team is phasing out all employees, because we now have AI tools that those people developed.
Talks are now underway between King and various unions. King and Microsoft have not commented on this unconfirmed information, but King reportedly wanted to remove things that were slowing down development, such as middle managers. A memo was leaked that talks about AI development, and that the size of the studio makes it difficult to “get things done.”
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