Tale as old as time. Big company completes a huge buyout for billions of dollars, employees get laid off swiftly after. Only Skydance is getting “creative” to avoid having “layoffs” in the headlines. Vertical Slice reports that employees at Skydance Games, the amalgamation of what was once WB Games and Paramount Games, have received a mandatory five-day return to office (RTO) notice.
The RTO policy is business-wide, affecting Skydance’s games division, DC Comics, and its numerous other media holdings. In addition to mandatory RTO, which can often be corporate-speak for “we want layoffs without the bad press or severance payouts,” Skydance is also setting up a voluntary buyout program that’ll help reduce headcount.
WB Games has already faced a number of reductions before this latest soft-layoff. Last year, WB Games shut down Monolith Productions which had been working on a Wonder Woman game, along with MultiVerus studio Player First Games and mobile development studio Warner Bros. San Diego. WB said the restructuring was to shift focus to its core game franchises including Harry Potter and Mortal Kombat, but WB Games’ overall value was apparently so minute that Netflix didn’t factor in its worth when the streamer was trying to outbid Paramount Skydance for the whole Warner Bros. kit and kaboodle last year. Paramount and Warner Bros. completed their merger, coming together under the name Skydance earlier this month to the tune of $110 billion.