Additionally, the industry is facing rising costs due to inflation and increased interest rates. Vela highlighted that struggling companies have it way easier than the individuals they’re laying off: “Now that investments have slowed down, companies have readjusted their spending to accommodate tighter budgets. “Layoffs suck - I don’t care who you are” Regardless of the details that led to this moment, the current picture is clear: Thousands of people have lost their jobs, plunging a massive group of people into instability and flooding the market with lots of qualified, established game developers looking for work. “For a while now, we’ve been spending way more money than we earn,” CEO Tim Sweeney said. Epic Games, which cut its workforce by 800 people, pointed to overspending. Sometimes an executive will blame it on a lack of sales or player numbers, like a dwindling player base for Destiny 2 or poor sales with Immortals of Aveum, which was out for mere weeks before Ascendant Studios laid off half of its staff. “This has been one of the most volatile periods in the games industry in the last 15 years.” Vela said that the IGDA is “deeply concerned” about the layoffs.īut why have there been so many layoffs this year? Studios have provided similar kinds of statements about laying off workers: We’re very sad to see our employees go, but we’ve had to make hard decisions during this economic downturn. “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. “This is not just one individual company,” video game producer Shayna Moon told Polygon. Gaming conglomerate Embracer laid off 900 people as net sales rise, more cuts to come The nearby tech industry has seen a 716% increase in layoffs announced year over year, too, according to research firm Challenger Gray & Christmas. (Polygon interviewed more than a dozen game developers for this story.) Unofficial trackers suggest more than 7,000 video game workers have been laid off in 2023 for comparison, another community-driven list suggested there were roughly 1,000 in 2022. Though there isn’t clear data on how 2023’s disastrous layoffs compare to other years, game developers Polygon spoke to agree: This has been one of the worst years for workers in a long, long time. The bad news just kept coming as the year progressed, as studios both big and small axed jobs - Digital Extremes, Epic Games, Telltale Games, BioWare, Bungie, CD Projekt Red, Ascendant Studios, Electronic Arts, Embracer Group and Volition, Amazon’s games division, and too many more. Only days after ringing in the new year, layoff announcements started rolling in: Wizards of the Coast canceled multiple projects and laid off a dozen people game engine maker Unity Technologies cut 300 people Microsoft laid off a staggering 10,000 people, which impacted both Starfield’s Bethesda Game Studios and Halo Infinite’s 343 Industries. Singularity Six is just one of the dozens of game companies that laid off workers in 2023, and its workers are among the thousands of people who lost their jobs this year. Though the game is a cozy life simulator, layoffs were something that was “not so cozy,” as a Singularity Six leader had called parts of game development in a previous meeting, according to two workers. Developers at Palia studio Singularity Six were still celebrating a successful early access launch when a surprising announcement was made: The company was laying off around 10% of its workers.
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