Coffee Stain Closes Malmö Mobile Studio, VP Departs After Four Years

The studio that ported Goat Simulator 3 to mobile and brought Smash Hit creators Mediocre into the Coffee Stain family lasted exactly four years. Coffee Stain Malmö, the Swedish publisher's 17-person mobile arm, has been shut down, with VP Daniel Persson confirming his departure alongside the closure.

Persson broke the news on LinkedIn. "Coffee Stain has decided to close our mobile development office in Malmö, and with that, my chapter leading this team comes to an end," he wrote. His farewell continued: "Building this office from the ground up has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my career. It started as an idea, that grew into an amazing team of talented people." He closed with a public recommendation for the entire team: "I wholeheartedly recommend each and every one of you. Any team lucky enough to bring you on board will be better for it."

Founded in 2021, Coffee Stain Malmö was built specifically to develop and publish mobile titles under the Coffee Stain umbrella. Beyond the Goat Simulator 3 mobile port in 2023, the studio also ran the mobile version of Songs of Conquest and absorbed Mediocre, the studio behind Smash Hit.

The closure arrived less than four months after Coffee Stain Group listed on the Nasdaq First North Premier Growth Market in Stockholm on December 11, 2025, under the ticker COFFEE B, at a market capitalization of approximately $616 million. The company reported FY 2024/25 net sales of approximately $104 million with an adjusted EBIT of roughly $52 million, a near 50% margin. But the same period revealed an organic revenue decline of 7% year-over-year in H1 2025, financial pressure that preceded the Malmö decision by months.

The numbers explain the logic. Ninety percent of Coffee Stain Group's revenue comes from six core franchises: Goat Simulator, Satisfactory, Deep Rock Galactic, Valheim, Teardown, and Welcome to Bloxburg. None of them is primarily mobile-native. CEO and co-founder Anton Westbergh has positioned the group's public-market identity around PC and console indie and AA development; mobile does not appear as a growth vector in the investor materials.

What happens to the 17 affected employees remains unconfirmed. Coffee Stain Publishing has not stated whether anyone was absorbed into the group's 12 remaining studios or let go entirely. The industry climate offers little optimism: game developer layoffs hit approximately 14,600 in 2024, and a GDC 2025 survey of 3,000 developers found 41% had been personally affected by cuts, up from 35% the prior year.

The broader context runs back to 2023, when the collapse of a $2 billion deal between Embracer Group and Saudi investor Savvy Games Group triggered a wave of restructuring across Embracer's entire portfolio. That process eventually produced three separate entities: Asmodee in February 2025, Coffee Stain Group in December 2025, and the rebranded remnant now called Fellowship Entertainment. Embracer founder Lars Wingefors retained 20.10% of Coffee Stain Group's capital and 41.37% of votes as its largest shareholder; Savvy Games Group holds 7.46%. Post-split, layoffs have continued at studios originally under Embracer, including Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal in 2025.

For a company with six reliable PC and console franchises and a near 50% operating margin, shuttering a 17-person mobile satellite likely read as straightforward cost discipline. For the people in Malmö, it marks the end of something Persson spent four years building from nothing.