Mario Kart Live Developer Facing Layoffs After “Major Project” Gets Canceled

Many stories we’ve written in 2024 have sadly been about layoffs within the gaming industry. To say they’re “unavoidable” is an understatement because they’ve been happening at such a frequent rate with companies both big and small that things are starting to lean towards the “insane” regarding the numbers that have already been highlighted with the layoffs. To recap, in 2023, there were about 10,000 people laid off, including whole studios, like industry veteran Volition, getting shut down. In 2024, we’re already pretty close to, if not over, that number and the team behind Mario Kart Live is prepping to add to it.

The studio that made the “home circuit” RC game was Velan Studios. They were a team that came together in 2016 when the creators of Vicarious Visions decided to break off and do something else, such as make Mario Kart Live. They’ve made several other games in the process, and apparently have been working on a “major project” with another partner. However, on Twitter, the team’s official Twitter handle noted that they had informed their teammates that layoffs were likely to happen due to how that project got canceled by their partner:

“A major project was suddenly canceled by an external partner, which means we may not be able to maintain our full studio size. Of the 121 current Velan Studios team members, 46 were given notice that they might be impacted by a layoff in 60 days. This is sad because we have an awesome team who are deeply passionate about their craft. In the near term, we are doubling down on our current games, some of which are scheduled to release later this year, and securing new partnerships to minimize the impact. We hope to rescind as many notifications as possible.”

We wish them luck in that endeavor and hope they figure out a way to keep their team together.

The problem is that this highlights the severe issue going on in the gaming industry right now. Various publishers or partners are looking at the “bottom line” online and are leaving developers in a bad spot by canceling projects that they were passionate about or had been seriously working on for a long time. For companies like Velan Studios, these projects could’ve been their “next big thing” and what kept them open for a few more years or projects.

Instead, Velan is now having to prepare itself for potential layoffs, and it’s pretty much inevitable at this point that more companies like Velan Studios will be hit with similar “decisions” in the future.