In November, news broke that Playtika planned to cut roughly 20% of its workforce — about 700–800 employees worldwide. Staff in the company’s Ukrainian office were unsure whether they’d be affected by the layoffs, but it now appears they were. According to DOU, the company has begun terminating or declining to renew contracts with Ukrainian specialists.

• Confirmed cases involve art professionals and managers, though the total number of affected employees has not been disclosed. At the same time, some specialists had resigned on their own earlier.
• An anonymous source told the outlet that the team had been helping train artificial intelligence using the work of the studio’s artists, providing detailed feedback and assisting in the improvement of the AI.
• Employees will finish out December, after which their contracts will expire. They were not warned in advance that their agreements might not be renewed.

This is not Playtika’s first round of cuts. Since 2022, the company has carried out four rounds of layoffs, affecting a total of 1,000 employees. The most recent round took place in June 2025 and hit the Ukrainian offices in particular.

According to DOU, Playtika’s Ukrainian team continued to grow until 2022 — as of January that year, the company employed around 1,200 people. However, after the start of the full-scale invasion, the team began to shrink, and by July 2023, it had dwindled to 700.