Formed in 2017, Humble Games was an indie publisher that seemingly did everything right. With a large number of successful titles in it’s arsenal such as Slay The Spire, Wizard of Legend, Supraland, and Mineko’s Night Market, it came as a shock to fans when, according to a post published on July 23rd via X.com, that ‘due to challenging economic times’ they made the difficult decision to ‘restructure’ their operations. It should be noted that this post mentions the separate functioning Humble Bundles would not be impacted by these changes.
However, according to multiple former employees on Linked In, all 36 members of the Humble Games staff were let go and subsequently replaced by The Powell Group. After two unsuccessful attempts to sell the publisher and demanding to see ‘an immediate increase in revenue,’ Humble’s parent company Ziff Davis would make the decision to cease to pursue any new projects.
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Chris Radley, a former Humble Games creative lead who left the company at the end of 2022, had a very strong opinion on Ziff Davis’s tactics on LinkedIn.
“Operations have been handed off to a third party consultancy. NO staff are left,” Radley wrote. “Do not believe this tailored message written by the parent company of Humble Games, Ziff Davis, who are trying to mitigate pushback. This was once again a failure of leadership across the board, and once again hard working talented staff are paying the cost for their poor decisions. Every ex-employee is being gaslit by this narrative, and it’s so disrespectful.”
Among the many games were a variety of queer-centric titles including Unpacking, Ikenfell, Stray Gods, Unsighted and Wandersong.
Coral Island, a beloved farming simulator with the ability to pursue queer relationships, was set to port for Nintendo Switch. Developers Stairway Games took to X.com to vocalize their frustration with Humble Games that the “restructuring” directly impacted all consoles including upcoming hotfixes. Key changes will be made to their Steam platform primarily for their Switch backers as its all the developers have access to.
Sources: Humble Games, Twitter, LinkedIn, Aftermath
