It’s been two years since Snapchat announced that it wanted to become one of the biggest gaming destinations in the business. While the global partnership lead, John Imah, was pretty confident with the eight games that appeared in 2019, it looks like things have changed. The company is stepping back and moving away from this venture.
In one of it’s latest financial reports, Snapchat outlined the issues the company has been facing this year. Besides a drop in the market share, it seems like revenue is also falling. It’s had to make a decision to cut some projects, one of these being future game development.
The report also has a letter at the end sent out to Snapchat staff. About 20% of the employees will lose their jobs, which is around 1,300 people. The focus is now shifting to augmented reality, revenue growth, and community development. If any projects aren’t connected to these three elements, they need to go.
I haven’t been on Snapchat in years, as I find the app rather pointless. Little did I know there’s been so much development in the background since then, adding more features. Not that it piques my interest to reinstall it, but the games portion may have made me reconsider.
While this new move towards no game development and employee lay-offs are sad, Snapchat believes it will save about $500 million in light of the latest drop in market shares. Perhaps the company, like so many others, was too ambitious and bit off more than it could chew. We’ll have to see if users feel any loss at the decision for no more games.
Other features are still proceeding, such as the dual-camera tool on Snapchat where you can use both the front and back cameras. Also, I believe it’s continuing with the Snap Map feature development.
