Video game publisher NCSoft and it subsidiary NC Interactive LLC are laying off 23 employees in Bellevue.
The company disclosed the layoffs in a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) filed Thursday with the state of Washington. The layoffs started at the beginning of February, according to the notice.
NCSoft didn't respond to a request for comment from the Business Journal.
NCSoft is headquartered in Seoul, South Korea. Its portfolio of games include Lineage, Guild Wars and Aion. The game publisher owns a variety of subsidiaries, including NCSoft West, which manages the company's business across the Americas, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
NCSoft also owns the Bellevue-based video game publisher ArenaNet, which created the popular role-playing fantasy game Guild Wars. In 2019, ArenaNet disclosed in a WARN filing it was laying off 143 workers.
In addition to Bellevue, NCSoft West has offices in Austin, Texas; London; and Newport Beach, California. The subsidiary has more than 2,500 employees listed on its LinkedIn page. NCSoft West still has open roles on its website in programming, art, human resources and corporate development, among others.
NCSoft's layoffs in Bellevue are the latest in a string of cuts affecting local tech workers. Seattle-based pizza robot company Picnic Works on Wednesday confirmed it was laying off employees but didn't specify how many people were affected. Meanwhile, Bellevue-based contract software company SirionLabs in January confirmed it had laid off about 15% of its staff, or 130 employees.
The layoffs come as companies look to cut costs amid high inflation and a tightening venture capital market. PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor's fourth quarter report for 2022 noted raw numbers don't always tell the full story.
"In raw numbers, 2022 was a great year for the VC industry, with most indicators of market activity at or near record highs," the report said. "When graded against any year other than the stratospheric 2021, industry activity was extremely strong. However, it is important to look at the quarterly trend, where activity dropped off steeply between the first and last quarters of 2022."
