According to Unofficial trackers, approximately more than 7,000 video game workers have been laid off this year. Last year, there were roughly 1,000 layoffs. Research firm Challenger Gray & Christmas says that the tech industry has seen a 716% increase in layoffs announced year over year. More than a dozen developers speaking with Polygon all had the same sentiment: this has been one of the worst years for workers in a long, long time. The developers talked about what it’s like being on the ground floor, how the lack of transparency hurts, crunch culture, the never-ending struggle looking for a job, and what’s next.
“Paired with tight economic conditions, the impact of layoffs has been amplified by reduced hiring and increased job competition,” said International Game Developers Association Executive Director Dr. Jakin Vela. “This has been one of the most volatile periods in the games industry in the last 15 years.” According to Vela, the IDGA is “deeply concerned” about the layoffs.
Video game producer Shayna Moon said “This is not just one individual company, this is our entire industry.”
“Many factors have contributed to the significant amount of layoffs developers have faced in 2023,” Vela said. “For example, large investments in games in 2021 and 2022 encouraged expansion at an accelerated yet unsustainable rate.” During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021 and 2022, the video game industry expanded significantly driving sales to everything from consoles and games to accessories, increasing profits. It added up to be worth $56.6 billion in 2022. According to Aubrey Quinn, Senior Vice President of Communications for the Entertainment Software Association, it’s a level of growth that no other entertainment industry has matched. “What we’re seeing now is that the market is stabilizing.”
Vela says that struggling companies have it way easier than the people they’re laying off. “Now that investments have slowed down, companies have readjusted their spending to accommodate tighter budgets. Additionally, the industry is facing rising costs due to inflation and increased interest rates. Worse yet, the current economic conditions are most disruptive for individuals who don’t benefit from major tax incentives or breaks that companies may have.”
Take This Clinic Director Dr. Raffael Boccamazzo talked about how transparency affects workers. He says that a company that’s transparent with its employees ahead of layoffs — or one that lets employees know layoffs may be coming, but that the company is trying to mitigate the loss — leaves people in a better position in terms of their mental health.
Boccamazzo says the alternative is much worse for employees’ mental health. “You go to work thinking it’s a regular day like anything else, swipe your card, and you can’t get into the building,” he said. “Both result in layoffs, but both have the potential to result in very different mental health outcomes, both in the people who are laid off and the people who remain, because of that perception of justice and dignity.” According to many of the devs who spoke, the lack of clarity and communication around layoffs makes bad situations worse. Some joke around while getting a mysterious mandatory meeting added to the calendar. Others start to panic.
Crunch – when people have to work longer hours leading up to the launch of a game, doesn’t help devs either especially during this time with all of the layoffs. “Some people are even questioning their identities,” Boccamazzo said. “There’s so much passion that goes into making games. I’ve been around a lot of creative professions, and I think the passion that goes into making games is unique. It becomes a part of [people’s] identities — they make games, they’re a game dev. And so the loss of the job is not just the loss of a job and financial stability, it’s also a threat to self-identity in a lot of cases.”
Workers at Ascendant Studios, developers of Immortals of Aveum and Palia developer Singularity Six reported crunch hours leading up to their respective launches. Afterward, both studios were affected by layoffs. Some developers said that it felt like a betrayal that their company treated them in such a way right after they did all the work just to get it released on time.
Other developers spoke about getting laid off right as some companies are celebrating certain milestones their games have achieved. For example, two Epic Games that were laid off in October found it painful as it happened as Epic Games revealed that Fortnite reached a new peak player count during the launch of the new season.
“Painful would be the word, to see people out there celebrating this product that just screwed you over,” one former Epic Games worker said. “I wasn’t on the Fortnite team, but I can’t imagine having to see a thing you actually worked on, that you were just snatched away from, being praised and celebrated for breaking records. And here you can’t find a job. It speaks to how little the people that are actually doing the work matter.”
With layoffs comes the neverending struggle that thousands have been going through this year, the search for another job. “People are dealing with inflation, we’re dealing with other economic factors,” Moon said. “People are getting cut into shark-infested waters.”
One developer who was laid off earlier this year from SEGA says that he has applied to more than 600 jobs – roughly three per day since he was let go eight months ago. He says that some days, he’ll spend all day applying for jobs. “I’ve never been unemployed before,” he said. “It’s a very traumatic experience — and I had it better than a lot of people. I had a cushion. I was given severance.”
Other developers say that they’ve submitted dozens to hundreds of applications. Several devs said that they have found new jobs but the majority are still looking and are expecting to still be looking into next year as hiring slows downs for the holidays. One developer told Polygon that they’ve never been looking for a job at the same time as so many of their friends before.
“It feels like there’s thousands of us competing for a handful of jobs,” a former Epic Games employee told Polygon. One person laid off from Volition, which shut down its entire studio, said he got a rejection from one job within a speedy 10 minutes. “I was like, Oh,” he said.
“A lot of reckless expansion of game monopolies has caught up to [the industry],” former Volition mission designer Alex Cline told Polygon. “Embracer owns a large part of the industry. Tencent owns a large percentage. We have huge consolidation of labor and IP. When you’re trying to get as much money as possible — if that’s ultimately your fundamental goal — then you’ve got to remove some expenses there. People were just an expense. They don’t necessarily care about the human impact.”
Most of the developers who spoke to Polygon said that something needs to change. They say that the way forward for the industry is to think about people over profit.
“The saddest thing I noticed is people who are younger and haven’t gone through this before who think this is their fault,” one former Singularity Six worker said. “It’s not their fault. They didn’t do anything wrong. There wasn’t anything better they could have done. They didn’t fail in some way. There’s nothing wrong with them — they’re not ugly and they’re not unpopular. This is just investors and other people who depend on investors throwing darts at a board. They just happened to land on those numbers. That’s it.”