Discord is laying off 17 percent of its workforce

Discord is laying off 170 employees, or around 17 percent of its workforce, its CEO announced on Thursday.

CEO Jason Citron said in an internal memo obtained by The Verge that the cuts were being made to “sharpen our focus and improve the way we work together to bring more agility to our organization.”

“This is a decision we did not take lightly, but it is one that we have conviction in to better serve our users, our business and our mission over the long term,” he wrote.

“Our company has changed and grown significantly over the past few years. We should all be really proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish together to serve the millions of people who turn to Discord every day to spend time with their friends.

“At the same time, we have to face some hard truths. We grew quickly and expanded our workforce even faster, increasing by 5x since 2020. As a result, we took on more projects and became less efficient in how we operated.

“Today, we are increasingly clear on the need to sharpen our focus and improve the way we work together to bring more agility to our organization. This is what largely drove the decision to reduce the size of our workforce.”

The cuts are Discord’s largest ever, after it laid off 4 percent of staff last summer.

This latest round of redundancies continues an incredibly difficult run for the games and tech industries. Last year, it’s estimated that over 9,000 game workers lost their jobs.