Memo: on top of cutting 20% of its staff, Snap is canceling its original shows, in-app games, and several other projects; layoffs could save $500M annually
Snapchat's original shows, in-app games, and camera drone are no more — Snap is laying off around 20 percent of its more than 6,400 employees …
Context & Ripple Effects
Snap's retreat from shows and games follows earlier cuts in its content organization, including a 2018 reduction across content teams, and coincides with a planned 20% workforce reduction that also reaches the hardware group. The move concentrates the retrenchment in businesses beyond Snapchat's core app experience.
The later 2024 workforce reduction and a further profitability-focused cut reported in 2026 show that this was not an isolated staffing adjustment but part of a recurring effort to reduce Snap's cost base.
First-order effects
- Employees tied to original programming, in-app games, and the camera-drone project lose their roles or projects as Snap removes those offerings from its slate.
- Snap targets roughly $500 million in annual savings by cutting about 20% of its workforce and ending the associated initiatives.
Second-order effects
- Creators and production partners for Snapchat originals, along with game developers using Snap's in-app channel, lose a distribution and commercial partner.
- Snap's remaining teams face a narrower product mandate, with resources no longer allocated to original content, games, or the drone effort.
Third-order effects
- Repeated workforce cuts in 2024 and 2026 suggest Snap's operating model is being reshaped around sustained cost discipline rather than a one-time portfolio cleanup.
- If that pattern persists, experimental media, gaming, and hardware initiatives will face a higher bar for funding than businesses tied more directly to Snap's core platform.
The trend: Snap is part of a broader shift toward pruning adjacent bets and repeatedly resizing organizations to prioritize profitability around core digital platforms.