Playtika office in Dnipro to be downsized and relocated to Romania

Playtika‘s office in Dnipro will be downsized and partly relocated to Romania, the company’s representatives told AIN.UA. As our editors found out, the company is not going to close it completely.

Dnipro office

During the last ten years, Playtika, a social casino company, was sold twice — for $140 million and $4.4 billion. It even went public in January 2021 and raised an additional $1.88 billion. Playtika was founded by Israelis Gigi Levy-Weiss and Uri Shahak, but from almost the very beginning, it was built in Ukraine.

Playtika’s first R&D center in Ukraine was opened in Vinnytsia, the second — in Kyiv. The third office was launched in Dnipro in 2012 as a result of a successful acqui-hiring of the Dnipro-based studio Alawar Southpoint.

The Dnipro R&D center, like the rest of the Ukrainian ones, is now headed by Israeli Ofer Dar, who previously managed the Kyiv studio House of Fun, which Playtika acquired in 2014.

Layoffs

As AIN.UA learned from its own sources, Playtika’s office in Dnipro will see some changes: some employees were offered a move to Bucharest, while the rest will leave the company in the first quarter of 2022. Specifically, we are talking about the team that worked on graphics and slot machines at Caesar casino. However, no one is talking about complete closure — there are still three job openings in the Dnipro office as of October 29. The remaining team will work on new projects. Perhaps it will work on developments for the companies that Playtika acquired in recent years — the German company Wooga and Finnish Reworks.

AIN.UA asked the company about the reasons for layoffs and relocation of the Dnipro office and how it would affect other Ukrainian offices. But at the time of publication, we did not receive any comments.

Risk factor

Notably, in its Q1 2021 report, Playtika, as an IPO company, named its R&D offices as risk factors — so-called country risks. Among the named offices were Ukraine, Romania, and Belarus. It is not clear whether these risks are equal. Meanwhile, as of 2021, Playtika employs 1,000 people in Ukraine, 600 in Belarus, and 500 in Romania. And together with people from Dnipro, this number will soon grow.