Razer released 30 employees approximately 3 weeks ago, primarily from their mobile division.
Razer has made changes to realign our organization and strengthen our path to growth. We will centralize our resources to focus on key projects and improve our profitability. As part of the realignment, we shut down several projects and unfortunately had to part ways with about 30 employees (about 2% of our total workforce). Other employees of the affected projects will be moved to different parts of Razer to work on other key focus projects and initiatives which will continue to scale and hire.
Razer’s statement to Droid Life on why they released 2% of their workforce this week has led to a lot of public speculation about the future of the company’s phone market. Razer stated that they had moved workers to “new projects”, and that it saw “great opportunities” in mobile hardware in the future. Reports show that these cutbacks and layoffs have affected the mobile team the most.
With the Razer Phone 2 revealed to be getting Android Pie shortly, it’s clear that they aren’t giving up all hope on their future in the mobile market with this move. Given the reasonable success for such a unique device as a gaming phone, one would assume Razer would have been quite pleased with the device’s sales. However, with the closing down of their Razer Game Store a little over a week ago, their actions would suggest otherwise.
The whole ordeal has been called a “realignment”, but it certainly comes across as more of a calculated retreat. And it’s not the first retreat from a big company in recent months. Game developing company Blizzard recently let go of 800 employees due to cutbacks.
Razer says that they have “new exciting mobile projects” coming soon, so stay tuned. You can check out our review of the Razer Phone 2 here.
