Dark Horse confirmed yesterday that it had reduced its staff, although it did not provide any names or numbers. One of those affected, Konner Knudsen, broke the news on February 4 with a post on Bluesky stating "Today I was laid off from Dark Horse Comics. While devastating news, I'm so proud of what I helped make there and am grateful to have worked alongside such amazing coworkers and creators.”

Later in the day, Dark Horse released an official statement:

On February 3, Dark Horse made the difficult but necessary decision to reduce staff. After experiencing a period of significant growth, we find ourselves needing to take steps in response to increasing overhead, changing market conditions, and external economic factors, We have begun to streamline all areas of the company in order to continue producing the quality content and products that have been our trademark since day one. Again, this has been an extremely hard decision and not one taken lightly. We appreciate the dedication, commitment, and hard work of our colleagues, and wish everyone affected success in their future endeavors.

Dark Horse’s parent company Embracer has been seeing a decline in sales (see “Asmodee, Dark Horse Parent Group Continues Losses”) and has reduced its total staff by about a third. Embracer plans to spin off the game distributor Asmodee as a separate publicly traded company and combine its remaining holdings into two separate companies (see “Asmodee Spin-Off Dates Set”).