According to Forbes Australia, Immutable has cut 29 roles from its game development teams. The company will now move most of the work on its own games to external providers, while keeping only a small internal games team.
However, it’s not shutting them down.
Gods Unchained will continue as a core revenue-generating studio product, but mobile RPG Guild of Guardians is being moved into “Evergreen/Maintenance Mode”. This means it will continue to operate but will no longer be treated as a major development priority.
This is a major shift for Immutable, which has historically been both a game maker and an infrastructure provider. Its early identity was built around Gods Unchained, one of the first serious blockchain trading card games, with the company later expanded heavily into blockchain technology, marketplaces, wallets, scaling infrastructure and publishing support for other web3 game studios.
However, despite the large number of games it signed up, there were never any breakout hits on the Immutable blockchains to match the likes of Axie Infinity or The Sandbox.
Now, this restructuring means Immutable sees more opportunity in selling marketing tools to web2 game companies rather than operating its own gaming blockchain and web3 games.
This is not surprising given the state of the blockchain gaming market. The average web3 gaming token is down 95% since 2022 — the IMX token price itself is down 99% from its all-time-high — while global venture funding for blockchain gaming has virtually ceased.
And this is why its future success is now pinned to the succes of Immutable Audience.
Immutable describes Audience as an AI-powered growth platform for all games. The pitch isn’t about NFTs or digital ownership. It’s about helping publishers acquire, understand and retain players.
This includes tools for player identity, email capture, attribution, retargeting, creator measurement, campaign management and personalized engagement. In simple terms, Immutable wants to help studios turn interest into installs, and installs into long-term players.
That is a more practical pitch than much of the earlier web3 gaming language. A traditional publisher does not need to be convinced that NFTs are the future of games in order to care about better player acquisition or higher conversion rates. Those are standard problems for every free-to-play and live-service game.
Immutable says its performance with Ubisoft’s Might & Magic: Fates highlights its new direction, with the use of Immutable Audience helping to improve day-one and day-14 conversion, as well as boosting the pre-registration to download rate, up to 10.2%.
Of course, this change of direction doesn’t come without risks. Immutable heavily cut headcount but still posted a $48 million loss in its 2024 financial report, marginally down from $50 million in 2023, and does not expect to break even during 2026.
President Robbie Ferguson says the company is still well-financed, however, with capital to support 10 years of runway available.