ESL FACEIT Group lays off 15% of workforce

27-2-2024 21:08

The company-wide layoffs affected between 250-300 employees, sources told HLTV.

ESL FACEIT Group (EFG) has announced the layoffs of "roughly" 15% of its global workforce, affecting positions across ESL, FACEIT, and EFG-owned subsidiary Esports Engine. The news was first reported by GamesBeat before it was published by EFG, with sources telling HLTV that 250-300 employees have been affected.

"This change is designed to support EFG’s sustainable growth ambitions and profitability," the company’s co-CEOs Craig Levine and Niccolo Maisto said in a statement. "As co-CEOs, we did not make this decision lightly. We feel it’s important to take accountability for it, and provide clarity and transparency from the outset of the changes ahead."

Positions across all departments and levels of seniority were affected "with a focus on efficient staffing for [EFG]'s core products," while one source told Dust2.us that layoffs were felt across the board but focused mostly on employees located in Denmark.

The layoffs come two years after ESL and FACEIT were merged following a reported $1.5B acquisition by Savvy Games Group, the esports arm of Saudi Arabia that is owned by the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) whose Chairman of the Board is Saudi Arabian crown prince and prime minister, Mohammed bin Salman.

ESL and FACEIT merge under new ownership

It is also the second round of layoffs in the past year from EFG after they cut 65 employees from Esports Engine in July 2023 following the acquisition of parent company Vindex. Laid-off employees will be offered "financial support on a global scale, in addition to local considerations" and have the opportunity to keep their laptop and mobile phones.

"This week's news, while difficult, is the next step in EFG's evolution from previously independent businesses into one centralized company united by a clear vision," Levine added in a memo sent out to employees not affected by the layoffs and obtained by HLTV. "Our priority has always been to build a future proofed, purposeful organization set up to drive growth."

In a company-wide Town Hall following the announcement, Levine and Maisto reiterated their statements regarding the layoffs before adding additional comments.

"Don't think of today simply as downsizing," Maisto said. "Think of today as part of a transformation, a transformation we started a year and a half ago and ultimately will enable us to achieve our goals in a sustainable way. Today's events are contributing in a significant way to the overarching goal of reaching profitability, and putting us on a clear path to get there, and potentially get there as early as next year."

The co-CEOs also answered some questions at the end of the Town Hall, including why it was 15% of employees impacted and whether there will be further reductions. "We tried to limit this as much as we could," Maisto explained. "You might have noticed in the business over the last year, we started slowing down on hiring quite significantly in the second half of last year, and quite significantly when it comes to 2024 as well.

"That was because we realized what was happening within the industry, we talked about it quite a few times in past Town Halls, and we started re-adjusting the trajectory of the business. So if you look at it compared to our plans, this is actually way more than 15%. Thankfully we have been growing throughout this process as well and that is what's limiting this."

In discussing the future, Levine added that the company would continue to be more transparent about strategies and goals internally, including updates in Town Halls and with their monthly revenue meetings. For the latter, he stated the company has "a record amount of revenue secured through 2024 already," before closing out the Town Hall reiterating that it was not an easy day for EFG with the layoffs, they were grateful for the team, and that they were doing their best to treat everyone with dignity and respect in the off-boarding process.

Carmac: "It's very much going to be the same ESL and FACEIT, and if it's not, then we should absolutely be judged for that"

2024-02-27 21:08

2 replies

what a shame. What has this company become?!

2024-02-27 21:22

1 reply

saudi dumpster

2024-02-27 21:26

oof

1st

2024-02-27 21:09

bruh

Big if true

Bro what 😂💀

damn layin off the esea employees, ESEA was good times

ESEA legit laid down and let FACEIT walk all over them considering the playerbase it had in NA.

2024-02-28 01:49

Not really. It was said that most layoffs were Denmark employees. Also, who do you think Craig Levine, the co-CEO is lol? He's the founder of ESEA.

2024-02-28 02:06

They took our joarbs

2024-02-27 21:12

what the fuck?

2024-02-27 21:13

YEAH OK. but who are those 15%?

You sell out to Saudi then lay off 250-300 employees? What a joke. Why not fire the upper management that made the company 'unsustainable' or less 'sustainabe'. Rarely do the top brass in esports actually take the hit. Just like in Riot where you fire all the normal employees and none of the c-suite getting paid millions and millions.

2024-02-27 21:14

31 replies

Well, when the company is unsustainable because esports fans are man children who refuse to pay for anything... Yeah kinda hard to sustain a business where fans would rather not watch that pay

2024-02-28 00:02

29 replies

i see your point , but the service faceit provide is not that good. toxic player are never ban , smurf in 90% of the games , sub advantages are map choices and missions wich are impossible to complete. i wont talk about super match and ID verification wich every smurf seems to bypass. i understand why people dont want to pay for that , bring back esea with karma points and i will pay

2024-02-28 00:19

That is a huge problem. At the same time these companies have been too cowardly to try to implement PPV (or do it like Korea did like 15 years ago and make it so anything above 480P has to be paid for). With that said. They sold the whole thing to Saudi, and its not like Saudi are in this business to make money. What is the point of selling to Saudi if it isnt to fund everything and basically own the esports scene. I mean ESL is soon going to do the whole of OWL, and the LOL World Cup (probably will be called gamers8 or whatever, but ESL is going to do the production for any event located in Saudi). They also run the huge prizepool events now for dota2 since the international stopped with crowd funding (gamers8), and its not unlikely they may soon run the Call of Duty League as well and everything else that maters.

2024-02-28 00:25

19 replies

Thanks for being the only person here who is advocating for actual PPV. I want that as well. But the reason these companies are scared to implement it is because the fanbase is against it. Mostly kids/young adults with no disposable income will not go for it. You can even see the comments here every time this topic is brought up.

2024-02-28 01:55

Its funny since these are old problems that have been solved ages ago, but you see everyone complaining as if there is no solution to this problem outside of selling out to a bigger fool to fund this thing (and we have reached the peak of that now). tbf to ESL and the others the game devs also dont really give a fuck. Its just a marketing exercise to them that prints cash that they rarely share (In Valve/CS's case its just the Major sticker money which tbf is a lot, but who knows if every major is going to be a Paris Major with 3mil+ payouts). Its in their best interest to avoid PPV as the only thing that matters is the # of eyeballs on it. reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/13.. + All the people buying those Pickems Coins are the PPV subscribers right there. I cant find a number on the total, but 40k+ PPV buys? That is pretty good, and I imagine there is far more. With me rambling on like this. None of this really matters for esports. Saudi is slowly going to run every major esport (Ex. They are gonna run OWL soon, LoL world Cup, and I wouldnt be surprised if they run Call of duty league, and with Riot firing a bunch of esports staff they may let Saudi run Valorant/lol in the future who knows since it would all be on the Saudi's dime). And all the Saudi's want is a large number of eyeballs, sportswashing, and bringing prestige events to their country (theoretically they dont give a fuck about profits/losses for the near future, but they did just fire ppl so idk)

2024-02-28 02:34

I don't know. The average esports viewer is used to having free things. You get a sticker for the major and it is one event. Now imagine paying for multiple events and you get nothing. Most esports fans would throw a fit, which they already do. Just remember when ESL made that deal with Facebook for Pro League and how many people cried. Yes the facebook player was utter garbage but you were getting something for free but people still didn't care and the viewership went down.

2024-02-28 12:35

Sorry, kind of offtopic, but what makes you think ESL runs the LoL World Cup? For years now Riot is extremly adamant of running their stuff themselves, explicitly not relying on ESL to do it.

2024-02-28 05:40

esportsadvocate.net/2024/01/riot-confirm.. btw obv if saudi gets an event ESL will be the production company

2024-02-28 07:04

Yes, but this article only says that Riot will "allow an exhibition tournament" at the EWC (which ofc will be run by ESL). This is not the actual LoL Worlds nor the Mid-Season Invitational.

2024-03-01 18:00

PPV is a difficult thing to implement in E-sports for some reason... I used to follow Starcraft 2 and there were several attempts to implement PPV by TO's such as MLG, NASL and others. I think it's fair for TO's to have 480p free and higher quality behind PPV. At least initially. It actually is amazing how spoiled we are with watching all this high quality content for absolutely free.

2024-02-28 12:23

12 replies

the 480p freemium idea is not something I made up. Its literally how Starcraft Brood War worked in Korea. If you wanted to watch at a better quality you had to pay. Starcraft 2 was very different especially since Blizzard had a lot of say in what was going on. Whereas Brood War had 0 updates for a long time so it was a real sport. No developer marketing bullshit.

2024-02-28 12:36

I know it wasn't your idea :D In sc2 they did the same with 480p and higher quality behind PPV (also no ads). But the TO's who did this did not have that much success with it If I remember correctly, might have had more to do with Sc2's decline in popularity rather than their PPV model not working. So maybe it would work better in CS

2024-02-28 12:40

yeah SC2 never captured the same magic Brood War had. At the same time there was far more competition in SC2 whereas Kespa/OGN* was basically running the whole show for Brood War (And internationally there is like what? maybe 3 decent players) + I dont imagine they had all that investor money ready to burn.

2024-02-28 12:49

It's difficult because the fanbase are spoiled people who don't want to spend a dime. It wasn't difficult to implement this in other sports where people are actual adults.

2024-02-28 12:37

8 replies

Yup. I think it will only get better though since the average age of people playing and watching cs is going up (since we all get older) and it's only a matter of time before a TO tries PPV in cs. We'll see.

2024-02-28 12:44

>it worked for years for free just stop fake flagging TO

2024-02-28 15:51

6 replies

Me? Are you sure you are replying to the right person friend?

2024-02-28 15:53

5 replies

yes, you are the one simping for PPV all over the thread

4 replies

">it worked for years for free" I don't understand how this relates to what i said.

2024-02-28 15:55

3 replies

pretending to be dumb is not a good look

2024-02-28 16:09

Alright you just want to insult someone, carry on and have a good day.

2024-02-28 16:11

how did I even insult you in that comment???? reading comprehension issues

2024-02-28 16:15

You severely underestimate how much money these saudi arabian oil tycoons have. The money they lose from fans not paying is nothing in the grand scheme of things.

2024-02-28 00:27

Ahh yes, pretend endlessly pouring money into an unsustainable system(burnt out sponsors, vcs, Saudis, etc) will totally solve the problem. Surely it isn't an overinflated and unprofitable ecosystem. Why would the Saudis come in just to piss more money away than they have to, surely they want a more streamlined and sustainable entity

2024-02-28 01:21

same product that used to be free now costs money? yeah, I'm not paying for that. I know it can be delivered for free so how stupid would I have to be to PAY?? consoomer piggy.

2024-02-28 14:29

becuase we are seeing the results of never being able to pay for a premium product, worse and worse broadcasts, mass layoffs, takeovers by saudis/china depending on the game. Now whos to say the saudis wont eventually start charging? Itll be the worst of both worlds

2024-02-28 20:00

man, you really will grasp for any straw to justify why you want to part with your money. pockets too full? pool of gold coins flowing over? if the saudis try to charge... I almost hope they try because it would be funny seeing it all come crumbling down for one flop event before resetting like nothing ever happened. you just know a bunch of "our" public figures would aggressively defend the move before it happens and then do a complete 180 as soon as it fails. the memes from that alone would be worth it lmao but seriously, you're never going to turn CS into a pay per view thing. not successfully any way. it's just not that important. it's not UFC where competitors only fight twice a year and can get seriously injured. not that I pay for UFC but at least I can understand why someone would. meanwhile every CS tournament is a dime a dozen inherently because these teams go to a tournament every month and then play for dozens of hours. you're not going to convince someone that this one match day or this one event is so much more important than all the others that viewing it should cost a fee. it's an absurd proposal.

2024-02-28 21:56

So youre saying that there is no world where you would be happy to support the ecosystem that brings you countless hours of enjoyment, in any way, ever? Even if its as little as 5-10 bucks a month for unlimited access. *The price of a twitch subscription* If thats what you are saying, then youre the problem with esports, the reason all the NA orgs pulled out, the reason sponsors pull out, and the reason the saudis own the CS scene.

2024-02-29 01:52

no, I'm not "the problem", you ungrateful wannabe-whale, I am the core audience. the ads target people like me. the business model works because there is a LARGE CROWD of people like me and we are valuable to advertisers. we make CS RELEVANT which is what triggers all the millions of investor money to begin with. we wouldn't spend money on CS viewing but we will spend it on something with lasting utility. the superficial and temporary can and should be financed via advertising. >the reason all the NA orgs pulled out the NA orgs pulled out of actual CS because the investor money moved to cartoon CS (simply because it was new, investors like NEW), and with it the players. once the orgs didn't have any players good enough to get to a quarterfinal in actual CS what would have been the point? those that wanted to compete in actual CS went international. complexity and liquid are still around and can make a tournament run. they just can't use majority NA players because NA players suck and cope by playing cartoon CS. >the reason the saudis own the CS scene they have more money than anyone else and they desperately need to establish a new business model for themselves that will keep them rich once the oil runs out. they have both the means and the motive to gain a foothold in esports just like they bought all of football. does football have a profit problem? football DOES have paywalled events, and yet they still sold out to saudis. really think about that, it might correct your strange fantasy for esports. CS esports is doing fine. you can tell by the 15 casters doing the job of 5.

2024-02-29 15:22

Where anywhere in history in any industry does the top brass ever take the hit unless the company completely implodes?

2024-02-28 01:52

esports winter: much needed for loss-making company, it is a business at the end of the day

Should have done this when ESL and Faceit became 1 company

2024-02-27 21:17

we are so back

2024-02-27 21:19

womp womp, not like they were doing anything

well deserved, if you dont stop the cheaters, wether is mm, faceit or pro gaming, ppl will just dont care anymore. Viewers leave and less profit is made !

2024-02-27 21:20

This is honestly nothing spectacular for a tech company that has grown this fast in the past few years

2024-02-27 21:51

he stated the company has "a record amount of revenue secured through 2024 already," I'm sure the 250+ employees you laid off are glad to hear that

2024-02-27 21:24

Inflation is a hell of a drug Learn the diff between revenue, net/gross, and profit margins, and how companies misuse them to make it seem like everything is fine when it's not

2024-02-28 00:07

Did not expect that recession hit e-sport sector.

No more saudia money?

2024-02-27 21:27

whats the point of selling to saudi if they dont even invest to grow

2024-02-27 21:30

9 replies

2024-02-27 21:45

i think they're just eliminating redundant positions after a major acquisition. happens pretty often in the world

wasnt the ESL Faceit merger a while ago? Had they not already removed the redundancies

2024-02-27 22:41

it takes a while (admittedly, not usually this long) to regroup and reorganize a company and determine which positions are no longer needed after a merger, and then also to prepare for the layoffs themselves and how to restructure afterwards. also, SGG made more acquisitions past the original ESL x Faceit merge which may have had something to do with it source: i was acquired by a large company myself and layoffs occured 3-4 months later, i was spared myself

2024-02-27 23:05

I work in M&A so I kinda know how it works as well, no need to have 2 HR teams and all that stuff but I thought the merger was like 3 years ago, seems like a very long time but maybe I've just lost all concept of time

2024-02-27 23:19

wow you're right, it was a lot longer ago than i thought ngl

was 2 years actually, seems like a long time to clear redundancies but maybe whoever sold the group held out on it cause they could show a nicer cost reduction case in their business plan than what was actually possible to boost the valuation, seems like a decent explanation

2024-02-27 23:32

My firm after a merger had this for the exact same amount of years.

ESL was loss-making company and saudi offered the owners an exit-plan which they would be a fool not to take... esports wont ever be as big as sports

2024-02-27 21:55

The Saudi purchase was just a sham to kill CS and make Valorant Great Again

Yet another instance of auditors asking a video game company or video game adjacent company "Why are these people here?" and being supplied no answer from management but a shrug.

2024-02-27 21:37

What?.

hopefully the streams retain their quality and arent riddled with even more tech pauses

2024-02-27 21:42

Lol i hope so

Laying off 15% of your workforce and then bragging about securing record amounts of revenue through 2024 is an interesting choice.

2024-02-27 21:49

revenue =! profit

2024-02-28 15:54

I swear, people that fall for corporate speak regarding Rev, net/gross, and profit margins at an alarming rate, they also never seem to respond when it gets pointed out that theyre looking at the wrong numbers, and why they saw the numbers they saw

2024-02-29 01:55

I much surprised that a layoff news emerge in a website like hltv, not bloomberg

2024-02-27 21:52

Bloomberg rarely posts about irrelevant companies where 250 poor souls is 15% of the workforce

2024-02-27 21:57

Ikr, and its getting weirder it has to be posted on hltv lolol

2024-02-27 22:00

wait a minute, what esl and faceit needed 1700-2000 employees anyway? that's a lot of people

2024-02-27 22:09

Hopefully they fired the woman responsible for the godawful ESL playlist.

2024-02-27 22:18

Why are people crying? This is good lol

2024-02-27 22:52

Why is it good that hundreds of people lose their job? The merge of ESL and Faceit shouldn't have been allowed to happen in the first place, let alone Saudi ownership.

2024-02-28 00:14

oh found a redditor What's the problem with a saudi company having ownership?

2024-02-28 01:38

Besides creating a oligopoly and jeopardizing the two biggest companies contributing to CS? How about making faceit less anonymous by incorporating realid, laying off hundreds of people? I don't trust them one bit as owners, especially with what we're seeing with other sports endeavours they own, like Newcastle. The 'public investment fund' pays for influence and publicity, they have no clue how to actually run a business. They just have endless oil money to throw around. But keep simping for them on how the layoff of 200+ people is somehow 'good' lmao. Seems like you are even more gullible than an average redditor.