One of the biggest caveats of working in the tech and gaming industry is that like any other business, there are times when the unexpected can happen. With that said, a significant drop in profits for Chinese software publishing company Tencent has resulted in the loss of jobs for more than 5,000 employees from the company.

More specifically, 5,500 employees including developers were let go by the company, according to a recent earnings report. Tencent reported a 3% quarterly fall to $19.7 billion, while gross profits dropped by 8.108% from $9.25 billion to $8.5 billion. A number of factors played part in these developments, including the COVID pandemic, lockdowns, and a government crackdown which has affected the tech industry in China.

The last time that Tencent had to cut several jobs was back in 2014. The company is known to hold shares in several other big names in the industry, in addition to publishing games under its Tencent Games division.

In other Tencent news, a partnership between the Chinese tech giant and Logitech was recently announced, teasing an upcoming cloud-gaming handheld. No specifics regarding the said hardware was mentioned however, so details like pricing, specs, and availability have yet to be mentioned. Logitech did mention that the mystery system will come with support for cloud-gaming services like Xbox Cloud Gaming and NVIDIA GeForce Now.

Source: Droid Gamers