As Civilization 7 continues to underperform, developer Firaxis Video games has confirmed that an unspecified variety of workers have been let go.
Emma Kidwell, a author on Civilization 7 whose previous credit embrace Marvel’s Midnight Suns, Hindsight, and Life is Unusual 2, first reported the cuts earlier at the moment on Bluesky. A number of different Firaxis workers shared related layoff messages on their very own social media accounts.
Hello! I used to be laid off from Firaxis this morning. I wrote leaders and civs for Civilization VII (NDA for now) and Deadpool and Storm for Marvel’s Midnight Suns. I additionally wrote the award-nominated Hindsight.
I am accessible for full time, distant work beginning ASAP. DMs are open:
emmkid.data— @emmakidwell.bsky.social (@emmakidwell.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-09-04T17:10:38.258Z
2K Video games subsequently confirmed the cuts on the studio. “There was a employees discount at the moment at Firaxis Video games, because the studio restructures and optimizes its improvement course of for adaptability, collaboration, and creativity,” a 2K spokesperson mentioned in an announcement that by some means lands even worse than the same old tripe about “agility.” 2K declined to touch upon the variety of folks put out of labor.
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Appalling as it’s, a extra urgent concern for Firaxis than the necessity to optimize for adaptability, regardless of the hell meaning, is the truth that Civilization 7 stays mired in “blended” critiques on Steam, a score that, as recorded by SteamDB, is slowly going within the incorrect path. Concurrent participant counts for Civ 7 additionally proceed to lag nicely behind these of Civilization 6 and Civilization 5, a sport that’s now 15 years previous.
However Civ 7 is not Firaxis’ solely concern: Its earlier big-name sport, Marvel’s Midnight Suns, was wonderful and sadly additionally one thing of a flop, to the extent that it solely acquired a single season of post-launch content material and cancelled a deliberate launch on the Nintendo Swap. That led to a earlier spherical of layoffs at Firaxis in 2023 and, as we famous on the time, a presumed impetus to return to the safer shores of a can’t-miss sequence like Civilization.
Considerably sarcastically in gentle of all that, there’s nonetheless no signal of XCOM 3, which stays a distant dream regardless of the excellence and success of XCOM 2—which is now approaching 10 years of age. Given the present shambolic state of the videogame business as a complete, although, with only a few exceptions (at the moment’s Silksong launch being a effective instance) there’s simply no such factor as a positive factor anymore.
Regardless of its struggles, the Firaxis layoffs don’t level towards any form of transfer away from Civilization 7, the rep mentioned. “2K and Firaxis are dedicated to realizing the promise of Civilization 7 and proceed to work onerous on title updates and patches to make sure it aligns with the wants of our gamers. The Civilization franchise is and has at all times been about long-term alternative, and we stay assured in its potential.”
