Pixelberry Studios Lays Off Staff, Parent Company Nexon Confirms Cuts

Some Pixelberry Studios employees found out they no longer had jobs while they were away on leave, a detail that surfaced through LinkedIn posts and quickly ignited debate about how the California-based developer handled the process. Parent company Nexon confirmed the layoffs but declined to specify how many staff were cut.

The affected roles span a wide range of functions including QA, writing, programming, art, and production, according to firsthand accounts posted by departing employees online. Pixelberry, known for narrative mobile titles like Choices: Stories You Play, High School Story, Hollywood U, and Cause of Death, built its business on episodic storytelling supported by in-app purchases tied to player decisions.

Nexon acquired Pixelberry in 2017, originally drawn to the studio's development and localization expertise within mobile narrative gaming. The March 2026 cuts mark at least the second significant round of layoffs to hit the studio in roughly two years; Pixelberry also shed staff in January 2024 alongside the shutdown of its Storyloom platform.

For the Choices player community, the implications are direct. Serialized narrative games depend on active writing and production teams to sustain ongoing episodic content. Cuts across those very functions raise immediate questions about the pace of future story updates, live service support for active titles, and the creative continuity that fans of Pixelberry's IP have come to expect.

The studio's situation is not isolated. The layoffs landed in the middle of a broad contraction across the games industry in early 2026, one that has already claimed significant headcount at multiple other studios. Analysts point to a confluence of pressures bearing down on mobile in particular: user acquisition costs that have outpaced revenue growth for many mid-tier titles, a deteriorating mobile advertising market, and publishers redirecting capital toward AI infrastructure. For Nexon, trimming the Pixelberry roster may signal a wider effort to concentrate resources on titles with more predictable, high-return performance rather than sustaining a sprawling narrative portfolio.

The repeated pattern of studios confirming cuts with minimal detail about scope or support packages continues to fuel calls for clearer severance standards and more structured re-employment assistance across the industry, and Pixelberry is now another name on that list.