Kunos Simulazioni Parent Company Digital Bros Reduces Workforce By 30%

Digital-Bros-Lays-Off-30-Of-Workforce-Kunos.jpg
Video game companies are seemingly facing difficult times. The latest to lay off employees is Kunos Simulazioni’s parent company Digital Bros – but fans of Assetto Corsa and Assetto Corsa Competizione need not worry.

Image credit: Digital Bros

After reviewing its current projects and structure, Digital Bros issued a press release announcing “an expected workforce reduction of approximately 30%.” This mostly concerns the studios, according to the release. One of the studios under the Digital Bros umbrella (via 505 Games): Kunos Simulazioni.

However, sim racers who enjoy AC as well as ACC and are looking forward to Assetto Corsa 2 in 2024 do not need to panic. According to information available to OverTake, Kunos is not affected by the layoffs. And this should not come as a surprise.

Digital Bros’ portfolio includes popular titles like Death Stranding, Payday 2 or Sniper Elite III in the “premium games” category (read: paid titles), the Assetto Corsa franchise is arguably the most important pillar of the company’s revenue. This is very much evident in the financial Interim Report relased on September 30.


Digital Bros: Assetto Corsa With “Outstanding Performance”​

The release notes “the outstanding performance of different versions of Assetto Corsa.” Digital Bros gross revenue from July 1 to September 30 was €20,225 million. The premium games segment generated roughly €15 million, or 74.3% of the company’s gross revenue.

Without the Assetto Corsa franchise, a significant chunk of this revenue would be amiss. The racing simulators alone “generated Euro 5.3 million revenue in the reporting period.” In simpler terms: AC and ACC were responsible for about a quarter of Digital Bros total earnings. Plus, about a third in the premium games sector come from the franchise.

As a result, reducing the Kunos workforce would have been a rather odd strategy. Indeed, Digital Bros is “cautiously optimistic about its long-term publishing plans, which will involve the release of the sequels of Assetto Corsa and Control.”

Are you surprised by the strong performance of the Assetto Corsa franchise? How much are you looking forward to AC2? Let us know on Twitter @OverTake_gg or in the comments below!
About author
Yannik Haustein
Lifelong motorsport enthusiast and sim racing aficionado, walking racing history encyclopedia.

Sim racing editor, streamer and one half of the SimRacing Buddies podcast (warning, German!).

Heel & Toe Gang 4 life :D

Comments

Hmm.......... If AI can be applied to other disciplines, why not game creation ? With the exception of MSG, companies could be looking at solving the problem of not being able to employee a gazillion people to put all of the features they want in the product, by using AI.

That is great for sim folks. You get every problem solved, VR, new engines, replays. career modes, mouse in F1 games(maybe not), good AI racing, the works.

Who needs coders anyway ? :whistling:
 
Premium
AI is on the rise but yeah…for really good (and working) results you still need humans (who can think outside the box). Take midjourney for example: at first look the results can look amazing but if you go into details you often notice a lot of errors. Still a long way to go for AI imo.
 
Maybe I'm not used to it because I typically don't read gaming news but this is the most tone deaf article reporting layoffs in dev studios that I've seen all year, and there has been *quite a few*.

Digital Bros is laying off 30% of its workforce; but worry not! YOUR game isn't going to be affected! Isn't that just grand?! Who cares about the people being laid off just before the holidays, they weren't working on YOUR game anyway!
 
It takes reading to the end of the article to discover that it's actually a good news piece for sim racing :laugh:
 
If I'm reading this correctly, sim racing titles are growing as the rest of the gaming industry fades. Makes sense if I'm correct. Games are games that come and go. Sim racing is a hobby with a long life span.
 
Hmm.......... If AI can be applied to other disciplines, why not game creation ? With the exception of MSG, companies could be looking at solving the problem of not being able to employee a gazillion people to put all of the features they want in the product, by using AI.

That is great for sim folks. You get every problem solved, VR, new engines, replays. career modes, mouse in F1 games(maybe not), good AI racing, the works.

Who needs coders anyway ? :whistling:

After looking around the modding world I can concur with this...

Textures and voice acting can already be done entirely by AI... But for best results it takes a little tweaking by some humans still...

And given the rate of advancement in technology I wouldn't be surprised to see the announcement of an AI sandbox game that takes the rFactor/BeamNG build it yourself approach one step further an actually builds the cars and tracks off of real world photos/videos/google earth data...

As someone who dabbles in modding it's both very interesting for how it'll speed up my work, but scary in the thought that with a couple of clicks someone could have an entire game covered in real world skins very soon... And within a few years take the rest of the modding experience away... Whilst it takes time there's a journey that many enjoy...

Sure I'll be able to enjoy things as a racer more easily, but as a modder the art of the work will be lost... It's just one of the many artforms that will have to deal with this as we move into the technological age and away from the constraints of the industrial...
 
AI is a great tool if it can be used properly, that is, NOT BY BUSINESS MAN THINKING THEY CAN CUT 99% WORKFORCE AND REPLACE IT WITH CHATGPT.
 
Is it just me, or is the name "Digital Bros" tone-deaf in today's day and age, especially after gamer-gate and all that?

Forgive the satire, but from the name I can imagine a woman interviewing for a job: "Yeah, working here at Digital BROS is just great! Us Bros have so much fun hanging around the office beer keg discussing - hehe - "performance evaluations" of our hotties - uh, I mean, valued female employees. Yeah (looks her up and down and then stares at her lewdly), you are definitely the kind that we're looking for here!"
 

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