Discord reportedly laying off 170 employees to "sharpen our focus and bring more agility to our organisation"

In a week that's already seen Unity and Twitch announce signifiant job cuts, Discord has reportedly told staff it'll be laying off around 170 employees - approximately 17 percent of its workforce - as it seeks to "sharpen our focus and... bring more agility to our organisation."

As reported by The Verge, employees at Discord were informed of the job cuts today by CEO Jason Citron in an all-hands meeting and accompanying internal email.

"Today we are making the unfortunate and difficult decision to reduce the size of Discord's workforce by 17 percent," Citron wrote in the email shared by The Verge. "This means we are saying goodbye to 170 of our talented colleagues. This is a decision we did not take lightly, but it is one that we have conviction in to better serve our users, our business and our mission over the long term."

While Citron told employees they should be "proud of what we've been able to accomplish together", he said the company also had to "face some hard truths". "We grew quickly and expanded our workforce even faster," he continued, "increasing by 5x since 2020. As a result, we took on more projects and became less efficient in how we operated."

Citron said the job cuts were part of a "need to sharpen our focus and improve the way we work together to bring more agility to our organisation", adding, "While difficult, I am confident this will put us in the best position to continue building a strong and profitable business that delivers amazing products for our users and supports our mission for years to come."

As detailed in Citron's email, those affected by the layoffs will receive five months of salary and an additional week for every full year they've been employed at Discord, five further months of benefits, three months of outplacement services, and continuing access to "mental well-being and personal growth" service Modern Health until the end of this year. Additionally, they'll qualify for equity vesting of awards scheduled to vest on 1st February.

Discord is yet to make a public announcement on today's reported layoffs, but Eurogamer has contacted the company for comment.

Today's report follows Unity's announcement on Monday that it was cutting 1,800 jobs, and yesterday's confirmation that 500 employees are being laid off at Twitch. It's a devastating start to 2024, and follows a 2023 that was blighted by extensive layoffs across the games industry, with the total number of workers affected believed to be around 9,500.