The American gaming company Playstudios closed its office in Belgrade where about 100 people worked, after the software company Zendesk from the USA fired in one day, 60 people with a plan to close the company in Serbia. Before that, the Italian Lottomatica also left, 348 employees were fired - in one day, in the middle of working hours
The wave of departure of the foreign sector from Serbia, especially IT companies, is heating up, and some of them are moving their business to the countries of the European Union, because they say that it is much easier for them to do business there, sources of "Vremena" say.
Why layoffs in IT are raining in Belgrade: Serbian programmers must change
Gone is the gaming company that was always hiring
The American gaming company Playstudios closed its office in Belgrade. This was announced on the LinkedIn network by Sanja Žugić, who ran Playstudios Europe in Belgrade, where more than 100 employees worked.
"I regret that I have to share the news that Playstudios is closing its office and operations in Belgrade in the coming months. Unfortunately, this means that a wonderful team of exceptional people and experts will soon be parting ways and losing their jobs," Žugić wrote on LinkedIn.
How an Italian IT company fired 348 workers "in the middle of a shift" in Belgrade
Just two years ago, this company experienced expansion, and the director of Playstudios Europe, Nikola Mitić, told the media that the demand for designers and developers is high.
"There are a large number of positions. Entering the industry itself is difficult, as it requires multidisciplinarity - knowledge of design, illustration, programming, marketing and others," Mitić said at the time.
Playstudios opened an office in Belgrade five years ago as one of seven studios distributed throughout the world. The media wrote about the Belgrade office in 2024 when it was announced that our people had created a new version of the Tetris game.
Is it about AI?
The Zendesk representative office in Serbia will stop working at the end of March, the Startit portal wrote. In response to the portal's question, Zendesk said that on March 24, the reorganization of business units was announced "which resulted in a moderate number of layoffs."
"Zendesk regularly reviews its investments in staff and resources so that the company can continue to deliver maximum value to users and improve the way people use AI-based services. Accordingly, we are introducing these changes to ensure the proper allocation of resources aligned with the most important priorities," the company said.
Zendesk is an American company that makes customer service software, used by over 100.000 businesses. They entered Serbia in 2023 by purchasing the Novi Sad startup Tymeshift, which was creating an AI-based team management tool. A few weeks ago, Zendesk acquired another AI startup, as part of its shift to adapt to the AI transformation, which has been particularly affected by the customer support sector.
Lottomatica is gone too
Italian IT company Lottomatica it fired 348 employees in the middle of the month in the Belgrade office who worked on the migration of their platform for two years.
Lottomatica, an Italian company for games of chance and sports betting, bought SKS365 (known by the Planetwin365 brand) in 2024 for 639 million euros. She recently explicitly announced that the previous year had been extraordinarily successful financially.
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