Despite the recent success of both Frostpunk 2 and The Alters, 11 Bit Studio has confirmed that it is laying off 20 employees in a round of layoffs that it says is necessary for upcoming development phases of projects currently in its portfolio. This was confirmed in a recent statement to Game Developer, in which the studio explained that it had avoided larger-scale layoffs by transferring staff internally to other projects. In 2025, the studio was reported to have 299 employees, meaning this 20-employee layoff comprises around 6-7% of the studio’s overall manpower. A studio representative also explained in a statement that 11 Bit Studios’s financial situation was stable, but that the studio was downsizing in preparation for upcoming production cycles.
Part of the statement by 11 Bit Studios reads:
We need to adjust new project teams to current needs, manage our expenses carefully and maintain cost discipline. Regarding the transfers and numbers, we managed to ensure internal transfers for most of our employees so they could continue their careers within the company. However, for the roles that, unfortunately, could not be carried over into new projects at their early stages, we had to make the difficult decision to part ways with around 20 employees.
When Frostpunk 2 launched in late 2024, it managed to sell over 350,000 copies in its first 24 hours, which is reasonably good performance for a niche city-builder strategy game. The Alters, while lauded by reviewers and players alike, performed slightly worse, garnering only 18,120 peak concurrent players on Steam—or around half the peak concurrent player count of Frostpunk 2. By official numbers, by April 2026, Frostpunk 2 had sold 880,000 copies and The Alters had sold more than 545,000 copies. Currently, 11 Bit Studios is working on a new entry into the Frostpunk universe that isn’t part of the city builder genre, and it is developing a revisit of This War of Mine, although not much has been revealed about those two projects other than that. This announcement comes hot on the heels of a slew of layoffs across the gaming industry, including over 3,000 employees at Microsoft’s Xbox.