Developer of Call of Duty and Guitar Hero mobile games closes Brazilian studio, lays off staff in US

The mobile game development studio behind the mobile versions of Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, Lord of the Rings and Age of Empires has shuttered its Brazilian studio in São Paulo and laid off staff in its Washington and San Francisco-based studios, VentureBeat reports.

The São Paulo studio is closing entirely while the Washington office is losing 25 percent of its staff and the San Francisco studio is losing 5 percent of its staff.

The staff cuts and office closure are part of the company's attempt to "rebalance our R&D function globally." A Glu Mobile spokesperson said in a statement:

Today we enacted a restructuring which has led to our President of Studios assuming direct control of our Kirkland office. As part of this global studio rebalancing we have reduced headcount by approximately 25 percent in Kirkland and 5 percent in San Francisco. In order to enhance Glu's global development efficiency and promote continued growth, we will also be closing our Sao Paulo office and concentrating resources in our other six locations. Over the coming 12 months we will be adding the necessary monetization and server-side research-and-development resources to support our focus on increasing average revenue per daily active user company-wide.

The company has lowered its revenue forecast to $19.5 million-$20.5 million, citing players moving away from arcade-style games to player versus player games as part of the reason for the lowered outlook.