As Civilization 7 continues to underperform, developer Firaxis Games has confirmed that an unspecified variety of staff have been let go.
Emma Kidwell, a author on Civilization 7 whose previous credit embody Marvel’s Midnight Suns, Hindsight, and Life is Strange 2, first reported the cuts earlier right now on Bluesky. Several different Firaxis staff shared comparable layoff messages on their very own social media accounts.
Hi! 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’m out there 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 Games subsequently confirmed the cuts at the studio. “There was a staff reduction today at Firaxis Games, as the studio restructures and optimizes its development process for adaptability, collaboration, and creativity,” a 2K spokesperson said in a statement that somehow lands even worse than the usual tripe about “agility.” 2K declined to comment on the number of people put out of work.
Appalling as it is, a more pressing issue for Firaxis than the need to optimize for adaptability, whatever the hell that means, is the fact that Civilization 7 remains mired in “mixed” reviews on Steam, a score that, as recorded by SteamDB, is slowly going within the incorrect route. Concurrent participant counts for Civ 7 additionally proceed to lag properly behind these of Civilization 6 and Civilization 5, a recreation that’s now 15 years previous.
But Civ 7 is not Firaxis’ solely subject: Its earlier big-name recreation, Marvel’s Midnight Suns, was glorious and sadly additionally one thing of a flop, to the extent that it solely obtained a single season of post-launch content material and cancelled a deliberate launch on the Nintendo Switch. 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 collection like Civilization.
Somewhat paradoxically in mild 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 trade as a complete, although, with only a few exceptions (right now’s Silksong launch being a nice instance) there’s simply no such factor as a positive factor anymore.
Despite its struggles, the Firaxis layoffs don’t level towards any type of transfer away from Civilization 7, the rep mentioned. “2K and Firaxis are committed to realizing the promise of Civilization 7 and continue to work hard on title updates and patches to ensure it aligns with the needs of our players. The Civilization franchise is and has always been about long-term opportunity, and we remain confident in its potential.”