Throne & Liberty Developer NCSoft Announces Layoffs Amid Restructure

NCSoft, the developers of the popular Throne & Liberty, has announced a “high-intensity restructure” that will see layoffs across the company.

The news was first reported by Korean outlet Yonhap.

According to the company, the decision for a restructure and layoffs comes as operating profit fell 75% year over year for Q2 2024. In addition, operating profit fell 66% just from Q1 to Q2.

“We reviewed various alternatives to overcome the current situation and discussed it intensely, but we came to the conclusion that it is difficult to overcome it with some symptomatic methods,” NCSoft co-CEOs Kim Taek-jin and Park Byung-moo said in a company-wide email as translated by Microsoft’s translation software.

They continued: “As a result of operating in a way that most of the manpower and functions are concentrated in the headquarters, the company’s financial performance has continued to deteriorate, and it is in danger of becoming a chronic deficit company,” and that this situation “seriously undermines NC’s original creativity and spirit of challenge.”

Since its launch in September, the free-to-play Throne & Liberty has regularly been in the top five of concurrent players on Steam. The free-to-play MMO has averaged around 150,000 players at a given time while regularly hitting peak counts of 200,000 players at a time.

The week ending October 12, the game was third in weekly active users (WAU) on Steam and 15th on Xbox.

As far as the amount of staff being let go, that information was revealed. Insider Gaming has reached out to NCSoft to get clarification on how many people will be part of the layoffs. This is the second round of layoffs at NCSoft this year.

Since the start of 2024, over 13,200 known jobs have been lost in the gaming industry. The actual number, however, is around 16,000 when taking into consideration layoffs with no announced totals.

For more Insider Gaming, read about the team behind The Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown reportedly being disbanded. And don’t forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter.