Bellevue gaming company ProbablyMonsters lays off employees

Bellevue-based gaming company ProbablyMonsters is laying off employees.

ProbablyMonsters founder and CEO Harold Ryan announced the layoffs Friday on LinkedIn. A company spokesperson said it wasn't commenting beyond the post, declining to say how many people were impacted and how many remain with the company.

"We will continue to add resources to our development teams and focus on getting our games to market," Ryan wrote in the post. "We are eliminating some central services roles while we continue to support hiring in critical areas."

ProbablyMonsters has more than 410 employees listed on LinkedIn.

Ryan, the former CEO at Bellevue-based game company Bungie, founded ProbablyMonsters in 2016. Its studios include Cauldron, which is making an adventure game, and Battle Barge, which is making a role-playing game. ProbablyMonsters raised a $200 million Series A round in 2021 and increased that total to $250 million last year.

In April, ProbablyMonsters' subsidiary Firewalk Studios announced it was being sold to Sony Interactive Entertainment for an undisclosed amount. Firewalk, also based in Bellevue, launched in 2018 and is maintaining its brand and management team. The subsidiary had almost 150 employees at the time of the acquisition announcement. Firewalk had entered an exclusive publishing partnership with SIE in 2021, as the studio is developing a game for Sony's PlayStation console.

At the time of the Firewalk and SIE announcement, ProbablyMonsters said it had more than 450 employees.

"Our affected employees are not only great people; they are talented employees," Ryan wrote in his LinkedIn post. "If you have openings, I highly recommend each and every one of them."

Multiple local companies have laid off employees recently. Earlier this month, Seattle-based consulting company Slalom said it had laid off about 7% of its 13,000-person team, while Seattle-based travel giant Expedia laid off an undisclosed number of employees earlier in September.