Tomb Raider is fine, Crystal Dynamics says, as it lays off employees for the fourth time in the past 12 months

Just four months after the last time it laid off a bunch of people, which occurred just three months after the time before that, which was just five months after the time before that, Crystal Dynamics has laid off 20 more people, "split between some development personnel and some central operations roles."

"As our current projects move into new phases of development, we continuously take a hard look at our team structures to ensure they align with our long-term studio goals," the studio said in a message posted to LinkedIn (via IGN).

"While we always strive to transition our people into new roles whenever possible, we have unfortunately reached a point where these departures are necessary."

The layoffs—the fourth round in a 12-month span, recall—come despite the fact that Crystal Dynamics is ostensibly working on not just one but two new Tomb Raider games: The all-new Catalyst, and a "stunning re-imagining" of the original game called Legacy of Atlantis.

Imposing repeated rounds of layoffs doesn't seem to me like the optimal way to make videogames—and I will note here that the new Tomb Raider game was announced a full four years ago and all we've seen of it so far is the Unified Lara concept art and that extremely nondescript cinematic teaser above—but Crystal Dynamics said in the layoff announcement that it "remains fully committed to the future development of our already announced Tomb Raider titles."

Those new games are set to be published by Amazon Game Studios, which indicated in 2025 that it is getting out of the mainstream game business. Amazon has since cancelled games and publishing deals, and laid off employees of its own, including an undisclosed number earlier this week. Amazon said when that walkback was announced that it was continuing to work with Crystal Dynamics on Tomb Raider as well as with Maverick Games on its open-world driving project, but in February it ended the publishing deal with Maverick.