- The firm has reduced its staff from 224 to 150 in the past nine months.
- Immutable was valued at $3.5 billion in 2022.
- The Immutable (IMX) token is down by almost 75% year-to-date and is trading at $0.65.
One of Web3 gaming’s major players, Immutable, has cut its workforce by a third since 2024 and has increasingly begun leaning on artificial intelligence (AI) to pick up the slack.
It comes amid Web3 gaming’s first boom and bust cycle of 2025, as investment and capital dry up, forcing startups to drop staff or close down projects entirely.
Immutable Layoffs
According to the Financial Review, Web3 gaming giant Immutable has reportedly fired a third of its employees since summer 2024, and is replacing “some” of these roles with AI.
The Australian startup launched in 2018 and eventually became one of the nation’s biggest private technology firms, with a $3.5 billion valuation in 2022.
A year later, the company had grown to 224 employees.
It began trimming its workforce in 2023, and by the end of 2024, it had cut about a third of its remaining staff, bringing its headcount down to around 150.
Now, in a push to reduce costs even further, the firm has turned to AI to take over parts of the workload.
Immutable explains that it “actively” promotes the use of AI within its company, giving its employees tools to work “smarter” and more efficiently.
The firm’s spokesperson argues this is necessary so as not to get “left behind.”
They also revealed that they now use AI to handle a majority of the firm’s in-game content and art creation for a fraction of the cost.
It says this was previously costing it over $1 million a year.
The spokesperson said the firm’s cash flow is close to breaking even by the end of this year, and is currently hiring for 20 new roles.
However, Immutable is now part of some of the biggest upcoming Web3 gaming releases, including the stunning AAA space-faring title, Star Atlas, and Ubisoft’s Might & Magic: Fates, which could set the firm up for big gains in the years to come.
Regardless, the modern gaming industry is an expensive and difficult market to break into.
And seemingly, when paired with the additional difficulty of blockchain and crypto, it can be extremely difficult to maintain healthy finances over the long term.
Not Enough Cash
Despite the perceived “boom” in Web3 gaming, the sector’s financials are struggling.
In 2025, Web3 gaming has seen a huge decline in funding, and it’s currently undergoing a significant shakeout with titles, new and old, closing down, being slated for closure, and abandoned entirely.
This includes games such as Square Enix’s SYMBIOGENESIS, Kryptomon, and most recently, Ember Sword.
This won’t be the case for Immutable, at least not in the near future, as it reportedly has at least four years of financial “runway” and hundreds of millions in assets to keep it afloat.
Layoffs in the gaming sector are a common occurrence as the industry frequently undergoes boom and bust cycles that see development studios shuttered, merged, or sold off.
Ironically, despite the huge layoffs so far in 2025, gaming developers are mostly positive about the impact AI will have.
