Microsoft-owned mobile-games studio King plans to eliminate about 200 positions and shift much of the affected work to artificial-intelligence systems the employees helped create, according to an internal memo and multiple staff accounts cited by industry outlet MobileGamer.biz. The cuts target level designers, UX and narrative writers, user-research staff and portions of the London-based Farm Heroes Saga group, which sources say will lose roughly half its workforce. One staff member said “most of level design has been wiped,” adding that the generative-AI tools the teams spent years training will now “basically replace” them. The restructuring follows Microsoft’s wider reduction of roughly 9,000 jobs across its gaming operations this month and coincides with the company’s plan to invest about $80 billion in data centers for AI development. King management told employees a new organisational chart will be presented in September after consultations with unions, leaving many workers in limbo through the summer. Microsoft and King have not publicly commented on the reported plan to substitute human roles with AI. The job reductions come as King’s flagship Candy Crush franchise continues to generate strong revenue, underscoring the industry’s accelerating pivot toward automation to cut costs and speed game production.