Rovio, the Finnish company responsible for the likes of Angry Birds, Tiny Thief and Amazing Alex, has just concluded a two month round of employee negotiations. The result? They’re set to lay off 110 people.
The negotiations were originally announced back on October 2nd. At that time, it predicted it would need to terminate 130 employees in order to keep working. The negotiations, while still resulting in a big loss of labor, cut the total job drop back by 20. That’s the silver lining here, I suppose.
In addition to the job cuts, Rovio has decided to consolidate its workforce into a single location. The Angry Birds maker will close its Tampere, Finland studio and bring all remaining employees into its Espoo, Finland office.
I don’t want to get too hyperbolic here, but do these employee negotiations and resulting layoffs indicate that Rovio is on its way out? This company was on top of the world with Angry Birds only a few years ago, with plenty of writers in the mobile game declaring stuff like “Angry Birds is the new Super Mario.” How long did that last?
What do you think? Is Rovio on the way out, or is this a small bump along the much longer road of success?