Refactor Games Lays Off 85% of Staff Weeks After Netflix FIFA World Cup Launch
Refactor Games, the Los Angeles studio behind Netflix’s FIFA World Cup: Launch Edition, has laid off the vast majority of its workforce just weeks after the game shipped. Studio founder and CEO Nathan Burba confirmed to GamesBeat that 85% of staff were let go, a cut that former employees say followed co-owner Delphi Interactive pulling its funding almost immediately after launch.
Insider Gaming, citing sources close to the situation, reported that a majority of the staff were let go, with around 80 people impacted by the layoffs. That figure aligns with Burba’s own percentage, given reports that Refactor’s headcount had grown well past 80 during the FIFA project.
A Friday Meeting, No Severance, and a Doubled-Up Final Paycheck
According to Insider Gaming, staff were notified during a general meeting on Friday, July 31, and when asked about severance, none was offered to the staff due to Delphi ending funding immediately. That Friday’s regular payday reportedly doubled as employees’ final paycheck, leaving little transition time for a workforce that had just shipped a licensed World Cup title on a global streaming platform.
The decision, staff say, came without prior notice tied to the studio’s contract with Delphi. The decision to cancel the contract with Refactor Games came without warning, according to those who spoke with Insider Gaming under the condition they not be named. Multiple outlets, including Game Developer and Kotaku, reported that the news first surfaced through a wave of LinkedIn posts from affected employees over the last weekend of July.
“Delphi Just Pulled the Plug” — Former Staff Speak Out
Among the most-cited posts was one from an art director on the project. As quoted by Kotaku, “Delphi just pulled the plug on Refactor Studios right after we shipped the FIFA World Cup game for Netflix,” posted art director Barclay Chantel on LinkedIn, adding “the entire studio was let go today”. A second employee described a similar sequence of events to Game Developer, stating that “after shipping the FIFA World Cup Launch Edition for Netflix Games, the studio’s parent company unfortunately pulled funding, and the entire team, myself included, was laid off”.
A full-stack developer at the studio, Nathan Potter, told a similar story on LinkedIn, according to Kotaku’s reporting, saying the entire development team had been laid off and that he was now searching for his next role. Neither Delphi Interactive nor Refactor Games had issued a public statement addressing the specifics by the time of these reports, though Burba did respond directly to GamesBeat’s inquiry.
Praised as a Hit Weeks Before the Cuts
FIFA World Cup: Launch Edition launched on Netflix Games on June 11, 2026, timed to the opening of the men’s World Cup tournament, giving Netflix subscribers worldwide — including in New Zealand and Australia — free access to a licensed FIFA title on TV and mobile as part of their existing subscription. Reviews were largely unfavourable, with criticism aimed at the game’s controls, visuals and player AI.
Despite that reception, both Netflix and Delphi publicly talked up the title’s performance only weeks before the layoffs. As reported by Aftermath, Delphi CEO Casper Daugaard said the game was “doing extremely well,” and Netflix’s own earnings call named it one of the platform’s two most successful cloud game debuts. The disconnect between that public messaging and the sudden loss of funding has drawn sharp criticism from laid-off staff and industry commentators alike.
Refactor Games’ Roots and Delphi’s Licensing Model
Refactor Games was started in 2022 by Survios cofounder Nathan Burba and initially set out to build a football simulator to rival EA’s Madden franchise, later shifting into a co-development partnership with Delphi on the Netflix-exclusive FIFA project. The studio’s roster included veterans from EA Sports, 2K Sports and OneTeam Partners, and its earlier title, Football Simulator, entered early access in 2022.
Delphi Interactive, a licensing and co-development company founded in 2020, publicly confirmed its part-ownership of Refactor earlier in 2026 during an interview with GamesIndustry.biz. The arrangement traces back to FIFA’s messy divorce from EA in 2022, after the naming-rights fee for the FIFA brand reportedly jumped from roughly $150 million a year under EA to a demand of $1 billion per four-year World Cup cycle, pushing EA to walk away and leaving FIFA to shop its name to new partners, including Delphi and Netflix.
Burba, for his part, has framed the cuts as narrower than a full shutdown, telling GamesBeat only that 85% of staff were let go without elaborating further. Other reporting suggests he has told remaining staff the studio intends to regroup and potentially bring back some of the laid-off team for future projects, though what those projects might be has not been detailed to those who lost their jobs. With a Women’s World Cup edition reportedly once planned as a follow-up content push, the abrupt gutting of Refactor’s team raises fresh questions about whether that continued support will materialise at all.
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