Live dealer specialist Evolution has finalized their purchase of Swedish developer NetEnt and immediately made some 3-500 of NetEnt's employees redundant by shutting down the company's Qormi studio.
The company finalized the purchase and there was a meeting shortly after, wherein Evolution announced that they were immediately shutting off the NetEnt Live Casino service, and announcing a reorganization of the company's management. There will also be a streamlining of the slot business, which will continue to operate under its own umbrella.
The redundancy was expected by the Economy Ministry of Malta, who commented: "Whilst noting the strong commitment by Evolution Gaming to its Malta operation, the Government, through the Ministry for the Economy and Industry, has immediately started discussions with the relevant entities to facilitate the smooth transition of employees who maybe at risk of being laid off as a result of this restructuring."
Comments
Man that's kinda crummy. I get that the company should be run efficiently, but before the ink is dry on the purchase to fire that many people? Bad juju.
Yeah it looks very much like they have bought out a competitor just to shut them down. Of course they get NetEnt's slots catalogue too which is probably way more valuable than their live dealer service.
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Yeah, you get the higher house edge with those slots for sure. That'll boost revenues compared to low edge live dealer games, which have production and personnel costs.
Sad though.
Oh, I got it. NetEnt Live suddenly disappeared a few days, so that I was wondering what happened.
This is not good. NetEnt Live was probably much smaller than Evolution.
This made me feel pretty sad. Not only it's during a global pandemic but also the way it seem to have been done is really heartbreaking, a few weeks before Christmas.
I agree blck. Weird that they did this all right now. Like Ed said, they bought them just to shut down their competition and take on another portion of their business.
The thing though is that these news have been pretty global and I have heard people saying that this makes them think differently of Evolution. Of course, business is business but the timing and way of doing this was really harsh.