Major casual and social game publisher Oberon Media has decided to cease internal game development to focus on distributing games through its I-play brand.
"After a deep examination and careful assessment of every aspect of Oberon Media’s business, the company’s management team has made the decision to no longer pursue internal, first-party game production," the company said in a statement.
The New York-based company will be laying off an undisclosed number of its 380 employees from a number of offices, though "a core of our extremely talented game production team members will remain on board to develop new content with external developers," the company said.
Oberon claims over 30 million players for the 3,000 games in its distribution catalog, down from 50 million claimed players last July, when the company
announced its Blaze distribution platform and SDK.
Founded in 2003, Oberon Media started developing its own games in 2005 before securing
two rounds of venture funding and
acquiring mobile publisher I-Play.
In late 2009, Oberon reportedly
laid off 100 employees amidst the departure of long-time COO Don Ryan.
Oberon signed a deal to
develop the Tetris for Smart TV platforms in January -- the current status of that project wasn't immediately clear.
