Tencent Lays Off Almost All of Fanbyte's Editorial Staff, Following Company's Revenue Decline

The world's biggest gaming company and named one of the most valuable companies in China, laid off employees following its decreasing revenue since the first quarter of the year.

As reported first by TechCrunch, Tencent laid off almost all of the staff at its gaming site Fanbyte. This includes positions like editor-in-chief, head of media, feature editor, social editor, news editor, graphic designer, podcast producer, and some of its writers.

The company has been laying off employees since August as the company logged its first-ever revenue decline. This caused the laying off of 5% of its workforce, which affected almost 5,000 people in the company.

Some of its remaining employees were shocked regarding the decisions that have been made as they believe that laying off workers is not the solution to solve its problem. Only last year when Tencent earn $88 billion in revenue.

Fanbyte's Instagram Situation

The laid-off social media manager of Fanbyte edited the company's Instagram account that states, "Tencent made $35 billion in net income last year and laid off almost every member of child company Fanbyte! Please support the staff elsewhere :)." Changing of the name to "forgot the keys?" was also done.

A user from Twitter named @RenOrRaven was able to screenshot the incident.

The comment section from the latest post of Fanbyte also has sentiments from different people regarding the lay offs. As per @tenmillionboys, "you fired every voice we hear in this clip because you don't understand that these people are the reason your site has fans."

Tencent currently holds a stake in dozens of game studios and companies globally. These include Riot Games, Epic Games, Roblox, Discord, and Pocket Gems. Along with this are WeChat and Tencent Music.

Cost Cutting of the Company

A report from SCMP last August states that the contract personnel's breakfast and dinner perks will be removed as Tencent is cutting costs and saving up money.

This new memorandum started last August 15 where the selected employees in that position will now have to pay for their own meals in the morning and night.

At the end of March, the company's employees who have the meal perks were 116,200 people as reported by Wingo.

June this year when Tencent also adjusted the salary policy to slow the pace of pay rises for its employee. As per this new and updated policy, immediate salary increases will no longer be entitled to the employees that are promoted.

As per Tencent President Martin Lay Chi-Ping, the company will exit some noncore businesses for them to control its headcount.

This article is owned by TechTimes

Written by Inno Flores