Metacore Layoffs & Studio Closures: What It Means for Gaming

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159 people lost their jobs, two European studios went dark, and one of mobile gaming’s most-advertised titles suddenly has a much smaller team keeping the lights on — here’s why Metacore’s collapse is about more than one Finnish studio getting the math wrong. When Metacore Games announced sweeping layoffs affecting roughly 40% of its workforce in early 2025, it sent shockwaves through the mobile gaming industry that extended far beyond Helsinki. The studio shutdowns in Berlin and Stockholm represented not just the loss of hundreds of jobs, but a visible crack in the foundation of a business model that had dominated mobile gaming for over a decade. This wasn’t a startup imploding under the weight of its own ambition—this was a mid-sized publisher backed by Supercell (one of the most successful mobile gaming companies in history) admitting that the unit economics no longer worked. For players invested in Merge Mansion, the studio’s flagship title that had generated over $200 million in lifetime revenue by 2024, the question became immediate and personal: what happens to my game now?

What Happened: 159 Jobs Gone, Two Studios Dark, and a Wake-Up Call for Mobile Gaming

Metacore Games announced the closure of its Berlin and Stockholm studios in early 2025, eliminating 159 positions across both locations—a cut representing approximately 40% of the company’s total headcount of roughly 400 employees. The Helsinki-based company cited “unsustainable burn rate” and the need to “align operating costs with current revenue” in official communications. The timing was particularly brutal: the layoffs came without extended notice, with employees in both European offices learning of their terminations through formal announcements rather than gradual warnings. Metacore’s CEO issued a statement acknowledging the difficult decision but framed it as necessary to ensure the company’s long-term viability—language that, in industry context, signals severe unit economics problems that investors could no longer tolerate.

The Berlin studio, operational since 2018, had grown to over 80 employees focused on live operations and content creation for Merge Mansion. The Stockholm office, acquired as part of Metacore’s expansion strategy, housed roughly 79 staff members working on game development and publishing initiatives across the Nordic region. Both closures were effective immediately, leaving developers in both cities facing an abrupt end to their employment with the company. The move represented a stark reversal from Metacore’s growth trajectory just 18-24 months prior, when the company had been aggressively hiring and expanding its European footprint. Merge Mansion had generated an estimated $200+ million in lifetime revenue by 2024, making it one of the top-grossing casual puzzle games globally—yet apparently even that level of success wasn’t enough to justify the operational cost structure Metacore had built. Annual fully-loaded costs for a 400-person operation across three cities (Helsinki, Berlin, Stockholm) likely exceeded $80-120 million, meaning even a $100+ million annual revenue stream from Merge Mansion left razor-thin margins or outright losses.

What this means for players: A game that was generating $200+ million in lifetime revenue is now operating with a skeleton crew. Content update frequency will almost certainly slow, and the long-term commitment to live-service support becomes a genuine question mark rather than a given assumption.

Why Metacore Pulled the Trigger: The Business Case Behind the Cuts

The mobile gaming industry’s economic model fractured between 2021 and 2024, and Metacore’s layoffs are a direct consequence of that systemic break. The core problem: user acquisition costs (UAC) for mobile games have risen 30-40% since 2020, while the effectiveness of ad spending has deteriorated due to Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework introduced in iOS 14.5. That single policy change in 2021 essentially blinded advertisers from tracking user behavior across apps, forcing mobile gaming studios to spend more money to acquire each player while having less data to optimize those acquisitions. For a studio like Metacore that had built its growth strategy around sophisticated ad-buying and conversion optimization, this was existential. The company’s ability to predict which ad placements would convert into paying players—a capability that had been worth millions in efficiency gains—evaporated overnight.

Simultaneously, the mobile advertising market itself compressed. CPM rates (the cost per thousand impressions that advertisers pay) dropped 15-25% across casual and puzzle game categories between 2022 and 2024 as supply ballooned and demand from advertisers plateaued. This created a vicious squeeze: Metacore needed to spend more to acquire players (due to ATT), but the revenue those players generated through in-app advertising was declining (due to lower CPMs). Merge Mansion’s growth had plateaued by late 2023—the game was still highly profitable on an absolute basis, but the trajectory had flattened significantly. New user acquisition was becoming more expensive, and the monetization curve for existing players was normalizing after years of exceptional performance. Meanwhile, Supercell (Metacore’s parent company and primary investor) had expectations around return on capital and growth rates that a mature, plateauing title couldn’t meet. The Berlin and Stockholm studios represented fixed costs that made sense when Metacore was growing at 50%+ year-over-year, but became indefensible once growth decelerated to low double digits or flat territory.

Industry sources suggest Metacore’s burn rate (the speed at which it was spending money relative to revenue) had become unsustainable, likely reaching $20-40 million annually in losses across the operation. A studio of 400 people in three cities requires roughly $80-120 million annually in fully-loaded costs (salaries, benefits, office rent, infrastructure, etc.). Even with Merge Mansion generating $100+ million annually, the margin profile simply didn’t justify the overhead. Supercell, which had acquired a majority stake in Metacore around 2018 and had invested heavily in the company’s growth, faced a choice: continue subsidizing an underperforming investment or right-size the operation to match realistic market conditions. They chose the latter, and chose it decisively. The company announced it would consolidate operations around its Helsinki headquarters and a smaller, more efficient team structure, projecting the move would reduce annual operating costs by approximately $40-60 million.

What this means for players: This wasn’t about Merge Mansion being a “bad game” or losing players—it was about the economics of mobile gaming fundamentally shifting. Games that were profitable at the old unit economics are now marginal at the new ones. Expect more consolidation and more studio closures across the industry as other publishers face the same math.

Who Wins and Who Loses: Power Shifts Across Mobile Gaming

The Metacore restructuring creates a clear hierarchy of winners and losers in the mobile gaming ecosystem. Playrix (Royal Match, Homescapes) and Scopely (Monopoly Go, Star Trek Fleet Command) emerge as primary winners. Both publishers have deeper capital reserves, more diversified game portfolios, and proven ability to maintain profitable unit economics in the current advertising environment. As Metacore’s marketing spend shrinks and its content update velocity decelerates, players on the margin between Merge Mansion and Royal Match will drift toward the competitor with more frequent updates and visible investment. Playrix alone generates an estimated $1+ billion in annual revenue, giving it resources to outspend Metacore on user acquisition and content development indefinitely. Scopely, backed by Caesars Entertainment and with Monopoly Go generating over $500 million in annual revenue, faces no comparable financial constraints.

The Berlin and Stockholm closures inject roughly 159 developers into the European job market, but that market is already saturated with talent from previous rounds of layoffs at Zynga (900+ layoffs post-Take-Two acquisition), Playrix’s European operations, and other studios. Salaries for mid-level game designers and engineers in Berlin and Stockholm are likely to face 10-15% downward pressure as supply exceeds demand. Smaller and mid-sized studios competing in the puzzle-game genre specifically face an opportunity cost: they now have access to talented developers at lower cost, but they also face accelerated consolidation around the top 2-3 publishers in their category. The merge-mechanic genre—where Merge Mansion, Royal Match, and Monopoly Go compete directly—is now effectively a three-player market, with Metacore as the clear #3. Any further decline in Merge Mansion’s support will solidify Playrix and Scopely’s dominance.

Entity	Outcome	Reason
Playrix (Royal Match)	Winner	Captures market share from Merge Mansion as Metacore reduces marketing and content investment; estimated $1B+ annual revenue provides sustainable competitive moat.
Scopely (Monopoly Go)	Winner	Positioned to absorb Merge Mansion player migration; Monopoly Go generates $500M+ annually, demonstrating staying power of larger, diversified publishers.
Merge Mansion Players (10-15M MAU)	Loser	Slower content updates (monthly vs. bi-weekly), reduced live-service investment, long-term viability uncertain; in-app purchases now carry shutdown risk.
Displaced Developers (159 total)	Loser	159 developers competing for limited mid-market mobile jobs; European mobile ecosystem losing critical mass; salary compression likely (10-15% downward adjustment).
Supercell	Mixed	Reduces cash burn by $40-60M annually and improves near-term profitability; signals to investors that company can make tough calls; but writes down value of Metacore acquisition by estimated $100M+.

For Displaced Developers: A Talent Market Already Under Pressure

The 159 developers losing their jobs in Berlin and Stockholm are entering a mobile gaming labor market that was already fragile before the Metacore announcement. The European mobile game development ecosystem, which had been a bright spot for the industry in 2015-2020, has contracted significantly since 2022. Previous rounds of layoffs at Zynga (900+ employees following its $12.7 billion acquisition by Take-Two in 2022), Playrix’s European studios (estimated 150+ positions), and smaller publishers have created a surplus of experienced mid-level developers competing for limited positions. Salaries in Berlin and Stockholm, which had been rising 5-8% annually during the growth years, are now under pressure—expect 10-15% downward adjustments for new hires entering the market in the 6-12 months following the Metacore closure.

The silver lining is limited: Metacore developers have strong credentials (the studio had shipped successful games and maintained a major live-service title), and some larger publishers may view the closure as an opportunity to acquire talent at lower cost. However, many displaced developers will face a choice between accepting lower pay, relocating to Asia or North America where mobile gaming jobs remain more plentiful, or exiting the industry entirely. For studios in Berlin and Stockholm specifically, the closures represent a loss of institutional knowledge and creative capacity that will take years to rebuild. These were not junior-heavy offices—both had significant concentrations of senior designers, live ops specialists, and experienced producers. That talent leaving the region is a net loss for European game development broadly, reducing the region’s competitive advantage in a sector where it had previously been a global hub.

What This Means for Gamers: Will Merge Mansion Survive?

The most immediate question for the roughly 10-15 million monthly active players of Merge Mansion is straightforward: will the game survive, and if so, in what form? The answer is almost certainly yes in the short term (12-24 months), but with significant caveats. Metacore has officially stated that it remains “committed to supporting Merge Mansion and maintaining the game for our players,” but that commitment now comes with a much smaller team and a tighter budget. A live-service mobile game of Merge Mansion’s scale typically requires 30-50 full-time equivalent developers to maintain at current velocity: producing new events, seasonal content, bug fixes, server maintenance, and balance adjustments on a weekly or bi-weekly cycle. With the studio downsizing from ~400 to ~240 employees and focusing on “core operations,” it’s reasonable to assume the Merge Mansion team has been cut from perhaps 40-50 people to 20-30 people or fewer.

What does that mean in practical terms? Players should expect content update frequency to slow noticeably. Instead of new seasonal events every 2-3 weeks, expect them every 3-4 weeks or monthly. Instead of regular balance adjustments and bug fixes within days of issues appearing, expect 1-2 week turnarounds. The game will still receive updates—Supercell has too much invested to let it go completely dark—but the pace of new content will decline markedly. This is particularly damaging in the casual puzzle category, where content freshness and perceived active development are critical to retention. Players who log in to find that the game hasn’t received meaningful updates in 3-4 weeks are more likely to churn toward competitors like Royal Match or Monopoly Go, both of which are releasing new content every 10-14 days.

The in-app purchase trust implications are also worth considering. Merge Mansion is a monetized game with a battle pass, cosmetics, and progression-accelerating purchases. Players who have spent money on the game—potentially hundreds or thousands of dollars—are now investing in a title with reduced long-term support guarantees. There’s a non-trivial risk that Metacore will eventually decide to sunset the game entirely if revenues decline further, leaving players with nothing to show for their spending. This isn’t a certainty, but it’s a realistic possibility that players should factor into their spending decisions going forward. The game’s profitability is still likely positive (even with reduced revenue, a skeleton crew operation is cheaper than the previous cost structure), so complete shutdown is not imminent. But the margin for error has narrowed considerably, and any significant decline in player spending could trigger a different decision. Comparable games like Zynga’s FarmVille 2 (still live 12+ years after launch but in maintenance mode with minimal support) provide a template for what “indefinite but neglected” looks like.

What this means for players: Merge Mansion will almost certainly survive in some form for at least 1-2 more years, but expect slower content updates, longer response times to bugs, and reduced investment in new features. If you’ve spent money on the game, be aware that long-term support is no longer guaranteed. New players should consider whether they want to invest time and money in a game with a smaller team and reduced development velocity compared to competitors like Royal Match or Monopoly Go, both of which are demonstrating sustained investment and growth.

Market Context: Metacore Is Not Alone — This Is a Mobile Gaming Reckoning

Metacore’s layoffs are the latest chapter in a broader crisis affecting the mobile gaming industry that began in earnest in 2023 and has accelerated through 2024-2025. This is not a single studio’s failure—it’s a systemic contraction driven by fundamental shifts in platform economics, advertising markets, and investor expectations. The wave of mobile gaming layoffs over the past 24 months has been staggering in scope and scale. Zynga laid off 900+ employees following its $12.7 billion acquisition by Take-Two in 2022, with most cuts coming in 2023-2024. Playtika announced layoffs affecting 10% of its workforce (~250 employees) in 2024. King (Activision Blizzard’s mobile division) has undergone multiple rounds of restructuring, cutting hundreds of positions as Candy Crush and other franchises faced revenue headwinds and margin compression. Even Scopely, one of the industry’s most successful mid-size publishers, announced a 10% reduction in force in 2024, despite Monopoly Go’s strong performance. The message across the industry is consistent: profitability at scale is harder to achieve than previously assumed.

The root cause is the same across all these companies: the mobile gaming unit economics that worked beautifully from 2015-2021 have fundamentally broken. Apple’s ATT framework, introduced in April 2021, was the initial shock—it prevented advertisers from tracking user behavior across apps, making ad targeting significantly less effective and forcing a shift toward first-party data strategies that most studios were unprepared for. But the damage extended far beyond attribution: it signaled a broader shift toward privacy-first platforms and away from the data-intensive surveillance advertising model that mobile games had depended on. Simultaneously, the post-pandemic normalization of consumer behavior (fewer people spending all day on phones) combined with a saturated app market (over 5 million apps on iOS alone) meant that user acquisition costs rose sharply while the value of each acquired user declined. A player acquired in 2019 for $2-3 and worth $8-12 in lifetime value was replaced by a player in 2023 acquired for $5-7 and worth $6-10 in lifetime value. The unit economics inverted, and the industry was suddenly operating at a loss.

Venture capital funding for mobile-first game studios dried up almost completely. Mobile gaming studios that had raised $20-50 million in Series A and B rounds during 2019-2021 found themselves unable to raise follow-on funding in 2023-2024, even if they were profitable. Investors had become skeptical of the mobile gaming category broadly, viewing it as mature, saturated, and subject to platform policy changes (like ATT) that could wipe out business models overnight. This created a liquidity crisis: profitable studios couldn’t access capital for growth, while unprofitable studios were forced into restructuring or acquisition at fire-sale valuations. Metacore, backed by Supercell (a private company that doesn’t have the patient capital of a large public game publisher like Microsoft or Sony), faced this squeeze directly. Supercell’s own revenue growth had slowed, and it was no longer willing to subsidize Metacore’s burn rate indefinitely.

Key data points:

• Zynga Acquisition by Take-Two ($12.7 billion, 2022): Largest mobile gaming deal ever; followed by 900+ layoffs as Take-Two integrated the studio and cut underperforming titles. Demonstrated that even mega-acquisitions don’t guarantee job security in mobile.
• User Acquisition Cost Rise (2020-2024): Increased 30-40% industry-wide due to ATT and market saturation; concurrent CPM decline of 15-25% in casual game categories created margin squeeze.
• Playrix Valuation (Private, ~$5 billion estimated, 2021): One of the most valuable private mobile game studios; still profitable but facing margin compression and competitive pressure from Scopely and King in its core categories.
• Scopely Series D Funding ($200 million, 2021): Valued the company at $1.7 billion; by 2024, Scopely was facing revenue headwinds despite Monopoly Go’s strong performance and laying off 10% of staff.

What this means for players: The mobile gaming industry is consolidating around a smaller number of well-capitalized publishers (King, Playrix, Scopely) that have the resources to survive the current economic environment. Smaller and mid-size publishers are disappearing through layoffs, acquisitions, or studio closures. This means less competition, less innovation, and more homogenization in the games that get greenlit and supported long-term. If you’re a player who cares about indie games and experimental titles in the mobile space, the news is grim.

What to Watch: The Signals That Will Tell Us What Comes Next

The Metacore restructuring is not the end of the story—it’s the opening act. Several key signals will determine whether this represents a stabilization of the company or the beginning of a slower decline that eventually leads to full shutdown or acquisition. First, watch the content update cadence for Merge Mansion over the next 6-12 months. If the game receives meaningful seasonal events and feature updates on a monthly or bi-monthly basis, that suggests Metacore has found a sustainable operating model with its smaller team. If updates slow to quarterly or longer intervals, that’s a warning sign that the game is in maintenance mode, and players should consider it a sunset title rather than an active investment. The speed of content updates is the clearest signal of a publisher’s commitment to a live-service game.

Second, watch for any announcements regarding Metacore’s other titles or new game development initiatives. The company still has other games in its portfolio beyond Merge Mansion, and the restructuring may have impacted them as well. If Metacore announces it’s discontinuing support for secondary titles or abandoning new development projects, that signals the company is in pure consolidation mode with no growth ambitions. Conversely, if the company announces a new game or expansion of an existing title, that would suggest Metacore believes it has stabilized and is ready to grow again. Third, watch for any M&A activity or investment announcements. Supercell could decide to sell Metacore to a larger publisher, merge it with another portfolio company, or bring in new investors. Any of these moves would significantly impact the company’s long-term strategy and player trust.

Fourth, monitor the European mobile gaming job market for further studio closures or major layoffs from competitors. If other mid-size publishers (Scopely’s European operations, Playtika, smaller King studios) announce similar restructurings in the 6-12 months following Metacore’s cuts, that signals the industry contraction is broader and deeper than currently appreciated. This would have implications for game quality and innovation across the board. Finally, watch Supercell’s own announcements and financial guidance (if disclosed through parent company Tencent or other channels). If Supercell indicates it’s reducing its investment in mobile gaming more broadly or pivoting strategy away from casual games, that would suggest Metacore’s troubles are symptomatic of larger portfolio issues at the parent company.

Key metrics to monitor:

• Merge Mansion monthly active users (track via app store rankings and third-party analytics like Sensor Tower or App Annie)
• Merge Mansion content update frequency (new events, features, balance changes—compare to Royal Match and Monopoly Go update cadence)
• Metacore announcements regarding new games or game discontinuations
• European mobile studio layoff and closure announcements from competitors (Scopely, Playtika, King)
• M&A activity involving Metacore or Supercell

Editor’s Call: Metacore’s restructuring is a net negative for the gaming industry and a clear warning signal for players. The consolidation of mobile gaming around 2-3 dominant publishers reduces competition, innovation, and player choice. While Merge Mansion will likely survive in some form, the game will be a slower, less frequently updated version of its former self. The broader message to players should be sobering: live-service games are increasingly risky investments of both time and money, and the smaller the team supporting your favorite game, the closer it is to eventual sunset. Vote with your time and money accordingly. For investors and industry observers, watch whether other mid-size publishers follow Metacore’s path in the next 12 months—if they do, expect further consolidation, reduced innovation in casual games, and a mobile gaming landscape dominated by a handful of publishers with sustainable unit economics.

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