Devsisters has entered a state of emergency management, with the core of the plan being aggressive workforce reduction.

On the 11th, Devsisters announced its Q1 2026 earnings and unveiled a management reform plan aimed at navigating market conditions and fixing its financial structure. The plan includes a voluntary retirement scheme for all employees and a temporary hiring freeze for non-essential roles. Furthermore, CEO Cho Gil-hyun and co-chairs of the board, Lee Ji-hoon and Kim Jong-hin, will work without pay, while executive compensation will be slashed by 50%. A 'Cost Management Task Force' will also be established under the CEO to directly address the financial crisis.

This move stands in sharp contrast to 2025, when co-chair Kim Jong-hin received 3.197 billion won and CEO Cho Gil-hyun took home 1.02 billion won. According to the Financial Supervisory Service's DART system last April, Kim’s compensation was heavily bolstered by stock option exercises, while Cho’s figures were purely cash-based remuneration.

The company defended these payments as a reflection of the 2024 turnaround to operating profit. However, Devsisters slipped back into the red starting in Q3 2025, recording an operating loss of approximately 700 million won in Q3 and a staggering 12.4 billion won in Q4. Shareholders were, understandably, quite vocal in their criticism of management taking such high pay amid deteriorating performance.

This emergency management announcement, delivered amidst brewing tensions between leadership and shareholders, highlights the depth of Devsisters’ current woes. The company’s revenue for Q1 2026 reached 58.471 billion won, a 34.4% drop year-on-year. Operating losses hit 17.374 billion won, with a net loss of 15.088 billion won—both representing a swing into the red compared to the same period last year. The numbers fell well below market expectations.

Driving this loss was a 40.8% slump in gaming revenue. It’s a cocktail of issues, including the lackluster performance of the new title 'Cookie Run: OvenSmash' released in March, and the 5th-anniversary update for the flagship 'Cookie Run: Kingdom' failing to hit the mark.

Industry analysts are pinning the crisis on an over-reliance on the 'Cookie Run' intellectual property. The critique is that having the bulk of their portfolio tied to a single brand makes revenue dangerously susceptible to shifts in consumer sentiment.

Despite the lack of fresh growth engines, Devsisters’ mid-to-long-term roadmap remains packed with 'Cookie Run' projects: 'Cookie Run: Crumble', a Roblox Cookie Run card game, the 'Project AR' event platform, and 'Cookie Run: New World'. The company also plans to aggressively integrate AI and other new technologies across all departments, excluding creative IP work. Whether this reform plan will actually turn the ship around remains to be seen.