Under the environment of "cost reduction and efficiency increase" of Internet enterprises, station B also began to lay off staff On May 20, the surging news reporter learned from the internal staff of station B that station B is starting a new round of layoffs recently, and the hardest hit area is the game business Employees said that the overall layoffs in the game business reached 20% - 30%, of which 70% in individual projects. Some employees joked that this was the "graduation season".
Between the end of last year and the beginning of this year, there has been news of layoffs in the game business of station B. Internal staff said that a new round of layoffs began in May, in which the proportion of self-developed game projects was high, and only a few of them were retained.
"This is basically a temporary notice," a laid-off employee told surging news reporters. "At present, the resignation compensation given is n + 1, and there is basically no room for negotiation."
Many insiders of station B told reporters that the main reason for layoffs was that the profitability of the game business failed to meet expectations. According to the financial report of 2021, the annual revenue of station B mobile game business last year was 5.1 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6%, accounting for 26.27% of the total revenue. Its revenue growth continues to slow down and is no longer the largest revenue source of station B.
According to the reporter, station B mainly operates and distributes games through exclusive distribution, joint agency and self-research. Station B once had high hopes for self-research game business. When the financial report of the second quarter of last year was released, Chen Rui, CEO of station B, said that at present, the scale of the self-research team of station B Games has exceeded 1000 people, and several projects are being developed in parallel and will be launched one after another next year and the year after next. "From the current business scale of station B, game self-research is the first focus at the current stage. It is predicted that in a few years, half of the game business revenue of station B will come from self-research products."
However, with the progress of game version number distribution, the self-research business that needs to invest a lot of cost is facing increasing profit pressure. The latest financial report of station B shows that its loss has not narrowed. The net loss in the fourth quarter of 2021 was 2.096 billion yuan, compared with 843 million yuan in the same period of last year, an increase of 149% year-on-year.
In this regard, Chen Rui said that revenue growth will be the core of station B strategy. "We should reduce costs and increase efficiency, control all the money we shouldn't spend, and improve the efficiency of the money we should spend." CFO fan Xin said that station B plans to achieve non GAAP break even in 2024.
As of press time, station B has not responded to this matter.