Behaviour Interactive Confirms Layoffs Less Than a Month After The Fun Pimps Acquisition
Behaviour Interactive has confirmed a new round of layoffs, with the cuts arriving less than a month after the company announced its acquisition of 7 Days to Die developer The Fun Pimps. The confirmation came in a statement shared with Game Developer, after affected employees began posting publicly that they had been let go.
According to Behaviour Interactive, the layoffs affected staff tied to its external development partnerships business. In its statement, the studio said demand for mobile and casual external development projects has declined in recent months, and that as it wraps up its remaining engagements, it does not expect comparable opportunities in the near term. The company added that these decisions were not easy and thanked affected employees for their contributions over the years.
The timing makes the move especially notable. Behaviour announced its acquisition of The Fun Pimps on March 24, 2026, meaning the layoffs were confirmed roughly 4 weeks later. That contrast is likely to intensify scrutiny around the studio’s broader business direction, particularly as Behaviour remains one of the more visible names in multiplayer horror through Dead by Daylight while also maintaining business lines outside direct internal game development.
What is important here is that the layoffs do not appear, based on Behaviour’s own statement, to be tied directly to the newly acquired studio or to its core horror publishing operations. Instead, the cuts were framed around weakening demand in the external development segment, specifically around mobile and casual project support. That suggests Behaviour is actively narrowing focus in response to softer market conditions in parts of the services business rather than simply making a broad company wide reduction without explanation.
Even so, the announcement lands in a wider climate of continued instability across the games business in 2026. Just days earlier, Iron Galaxy also confirmed layoffs as it restructured in response to what it called current market conditions, while recent reporting also pointed to job cuts at Take Two. Behaviour now joins that same broader industry pattern, where studios and publishers continue reshaping teams even as major projects and acquisitions move forward.
From an industry perspective, this is the part that keeps standing out. Expansion and contraction are happening almost simultaneously. One company acquires a studio, adds IP, and signals long term ambition, then confirms layoffs weeks later in another part of the business. That kind of split strategy reflects how uneven the current market has become. Companies are still investing where they see strategic upside, but they are also cutting aggressively where demand or margins no longer support the old structure.
For developers, that creates a difficult environment where even established companies with active franchises and acquisition momentum are not necessarily seen as stable. For players, the headlines can start to blur together. But for the people working inside these studios, each new round of cuts chips away at confidence in the long term health of the industry. Behaviour’s latest move may be explained by business conditions, but it still adds to a trend that continues to define the games sector in 2026.
What do you think this says about the current state of the games business: are studios restructuring intelligently, or is the industry still stuck in a cycle of unstable growth and sudden cuts?
