12 Months of Major Game Industry Layoffs
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- Опубликовано: 9 фев 2025
- Hosted By: Brian Gaar & Gus Sorola
Edited By: Aaron Porter
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I work in the Medical Device Industry and we are like 50% staffed full of 3D Artists that couldn't get or used to have Game jobs.
Do you have examples? I'm not doubting you I'd just like to know more
@@otooandoh9556 I guess I should say more graduates from game programs that had multiple jobs that were not stable
Just going to toss my two cents in: I graduated from Full Sail with a bachelor's in Game Development. Not only is it difficult to get into the industry as a dev (the interviews alone can take hours), but there's also a constant crunch and worry about the job cycle. I didn't realize how much stress things outside of coding would have on my life until I looked at former classmates getting into the field.
Kinda makes me glad that my degree isn't being used.
Wow, Game developers really need to unionize
AbbyGirlJ this...... 10000 times this.
It's a problem with the tech sector in general.
We're so used to there being way more jobs than qualified people, that we, as an industry, never felt the need for collective bargaining rights.
But there's a half-life to that attitude, and it's something we're really going to have to address.
It's tough in some parts of the U.S. and I'm sure in the world too. A lot of states are very anti-union so that they can take advantage of their employees. In the Southeast, a couple of the companies I've worked for in the past 5 years hit you with some EXTREMELY anti-union videos during orientation, and being in an at-will employment state makes it that much more impossible to rally together to defend worker rights. They'd rather use people until they're totally spent and then toss them out for new blood.
@@Wrrohm yeah it's a twisted system.
Thankfully it's easier to unionize over here in Ireland, but I sympathize with the difficulties involved in it stateside.
No one in America IS UNIONIZED
So the games industry is simultaneously hyper-monetized with microtransactions and expensive DLC's, and also experiencing a spat of layoffs and bankruptcies. I understand these are different corners of the industry, but that does not seem healthy.
It is just like every other industry. It is more profitable than ever, but all the money is on the top end with the executives.
we have microtransacrtions to blame since theyre one of the main reasons why so many studios are getting shut down im looking at u ea
Few corrections / notes: Brian noted that most of the time people know when to jump ship. In the case of telltale games, people were being hired and moving across the country *a week before the shutdown*. Another misconception is that of "highly paid employees". Even programmers in the games industry, who are largely paid the most, get paid much less on average for the same if not harder work than is done in traditional software.
It feels like a lot of obvious issues are being overlooked, and that things only bosses and managers can fix while this industry exists without a union, such as crunch culture and comparatively low pay, get partially blamed on the workers being exploited, when the onus is obviously mostly on those doing the exploiting.
Game studios and movie studios do end up paying $15 bucks an hour, I know, because I’ve been on the receiving end of that. Until workers are willing to start turning down jobs that don’t pay enough, studios will continue to take advantage of us.
Aaron Saluk Jesus I’m making more than that from my job and I’m second year in cool
I have to say I like these videos more than news. Too many others do news, this is more unique.
It’s pretty simple... gaming got too big too fast and this is the hemorrhaging of the excess
Not to mention Indy gaming has been making up for what AAA studios are lacking in... Of Course there’s a few exception like Breath of the wild, red dead, god of war… But for the most part of the industry is been sucking AAA wise
Yet the AAA companies make billions in profit every year and most indie devs can barely make a profit, if they can at all. The indie devs can't afford to hire a bunch of employees, and the ones they do hire won't make much. It is one problem with a passion job like game design. The only way to get a job that will let you make enough money to live on is to work for the large companies, and they will exploit and abuse you as much as they can get away with.
You know these were Indie studios that we’re laid off shut down right?? 👀
Most of these weren't indie studios actually. They all had investors, or were studios owned by the big AAA publishers. Telltale shut down due to poor management. They were managing the company in a way that they relied entirely on getting investments from a small set of outside investors. One investor pulled their money and they went under. That is poor management. Gazillion was doing great until David Brevik stepped down as CEO. The new guy stopped all innovations on the game itself and they added absolutely nothing to Marvel Heroes for a year except new loot boxes and microtransactions. They were doing great as a company when releasing new characters and content every month. It was poor management and decision making that ran them out of business. The only exception to these companies going under for poor management are the ones that got shut down by their parent publisher because they could exploit their IPs and make more money without supporting the studio.
I agree, this might be a case of too many companies & over saturation of games in general where the public can only invest so much time & $$ into only certain # of games. Boss Key Prod.(Law Breakers) is example of this. & Big Parent Corps always want their smaller game Dev to make hundreds of mills to keep them open
It's a self-inflicted hemorrhage if anything. We can't forget how much profit publishers are making regardless of studios closing. They will just find other studios and buy them out so that the cycle repeats. The only thing that will stop this is their ruin of a company and that won't happen unless they lose their major profits (i.e. microtransactions). It's literally impossible to stop people from purchasing the games they want to buy. Thus, the only true remedy is the removal of microtransactions, primarily lootboxes. Even if they were ever to go F2P for their major titles, it still wouldn't be enough.
Maybe studios should re-evaluate how they manage their resources. This tells you that what the industry is doing is wrong. The games industry is growing. They see more and more players and more money every year yet somehow developers like Capcom and EA can't keep studios open. Bullshit. They are doing something wrong. Their business strategies are failing. This isn't about revenue or the price of games. It's about Companies not knowing their limitations.
Exactly; Not only do they over-bloat the scope of their game (realism, open world, choices matter, etc), but they grossly overspend on marketing
Other game critics such as Jim Sterling have stated before that there's no mid-level market which is a problem currently in the industry. Mid-level studios either burn out, get acquired by bigger corporations, or get shut down by their publisher (RIP Carbine). From my experience job hunting within the industry, this is especially grueling for college grads trying to break in.
Indies don't really have the budget to hire (unless you start your own), and because there's virtually no mid-level studios to take on interns, you either have the 3+ years experience fresh out of college or you don't. Many of my colleagues, and myself as a programmer, have basically resorted to looking for work in other industries like IT that we can adapt our game development skills to.
The other major thing about the layoffs we've seen from major companies is that it's now another hurdle for graduated students in the industry who went to school for game design to get over; we already have to get over the high requirements companies want for hiring as there's a lack of entry level jobs, but now we have to fight more experienced industry professionals for those jobs.
Brian and Gus made some good point about the gaming industry. I worked in the gaming industry for 4 years and funding gets cut then you get laid off. And its harder when you have a family, because you cannot just pick up an move after every project.
Don't have a set release date until you're game is gold. That will cut back on crunch culture.
I blame the publishers who make outrageous demands and set unreasonable deadlines.
I worry about the cooperate culture in the games industry. I feel like I’m always hearing horror stories about the unrealistic expectations of upper management and cooperate and how that affects the products we receive.
Its a tricky one in a creative industry. The boom bust of creative bursts don't always line up with long healthy careers
Seeing more studio shut down makes me worried about gaming in the future. It's like movies when popular studios like Disney have taken place. Like you cannot beat them.
While gaming, i can see that big publisher is taking over.
The problem is I have enough games from the past 30 years I could go without ever buying one again
unfortunate, but finally highlighting a major problem with the industry, workers are routinely over-worked to the point of being unhealthy, they're mostly temp contracted workers that are jettisoned as soon as the game is finished, and large developers are bloated with multiple teams working on multiple products, and if one of those products isn't a hit it jeopardizes pretty much everything in development
The scale has been tipped too far to go back. We have conditioned two generations of gamers to believe that the better looking the graphics are the more worthy the game is of your time.
I really liked Gigantic. It's sad that is was forgotten so fast.
Also game dev here. If I can put some opinion here.
Most staff members are commissioned rather than kept is because most jobs in the game cycle are knee and done. Such as writers concept artists and even certain modelers.
It does suck but that's also something to contribute as well
True. Way easier from them to screw over contractors rather than actual employees.
@@ThrottleKitty best answer ^
Because of the game sadly flops at least the people commissioned are already paid for their work
wow that sucks because i was a big fan of the dead rising series
Will Huey they had layoffs, they didn’t go out of business. Im sure we will see another dead rising game at some point.
Hopefully you guys are wrong.
Will Huey they still make it. But japanese capcom will make it
Will Huey Yeah, it’s not all bad though. If anything this is a good thing for Dead Rising because it means if they are going to make another one, it’ll likely be in the hands of Japanese devs again.
Is it just me or is this crazy that all the developers are pretty much the zombie creators visceral games made Dead Space tell tale made The Walking Dead and then Dead Rising it's a little weird and a little bit suspicious I think it's just because everybody's getting bored of zombie games and they need to stop making them right now if I see another zombie company shut down then I'm a very very confident that's what's going on. it's a theory but it make a lot of sense.
And yet people call microtransactions and DLC greedy. It was literally keeping these mid-level studios alive until people basically boycotted them.
I would have really loved to see what the RT Games people think, Brian for instance.
So at this point who are these Publishers NOT taking advantage of? They take advantage of their developers, they take advantage of their retailers, they take advantage of their consumers, and they take advantage of the law to abuse tax havens. I think we need the Publishers OUT of the gaming industry.
All they do for the game these days is print a few discs, give shark-tier loans, and upload the final build to the digital content servers. Banks themselves give better loans, Disc prints are largely obsolete and if you HAVE to have a printed disc, there are companies you can hire to print discs for your studio in the billions near cost if you can compile the code, and banks give more reliable and safer loans as long as you just don't offer the studio as collateral!
Walmart management has high turnover. Someone should tell them they're getting left behind by the times.
Hi - I'm a software programmer - and after 7 years now I really know the burn out type of feeling from tech start us's ect very tough
If the market is saturated then I say game devs need to spend smarter on different genres of games
Very good discussion... I think it comes down to today's companies have to make a Smash Hit or bust. They're not allowed to only have a decent selling game with some profits. It has to be such a hit that it's a homerun.
Same stupid situation in New television series, if it's not the new friends then cancel after season 1
@@owensparks5013 absolutely correct. ...especially the big 3...CBS, FOX, and NBC
It's the result of a bloodbath, and the next things that you'll want to analyze are reduction of consumer interest/comprehension in physics-related and engineering-related fields, lack of national focus on technological initiatives, decline of product quality due to illiteracy and reduction of intellectual depth over the past two decades, outsourcing and inability of major intellectual sources to produce their own materials, disappearance of American professional culture from entertainment, economic globalization, and cultural compliance. You'll need to educate your viewers and revive consumer interest in entertainment-related technologies if you don't want to see your industries collapse entirely.
Consumer Confidence is at an all time low. Sales of games are less but gouging microtransactions are more.
The next video game crash is on its way, heck it might already be here.
Not the only part of the issue but I know that the animation, vfx and videogame industries are being hit with a similar problem of "less" money being given for more expectations which can translate into less time for more work. And sacrificial layoffs and blame-tossing politics.
Ok, really unpopular opinion going but: Wouldn't keeping unnecessary employees hired result on the rising of costs of the productions of the games,which would mean that the games would become more expensive for us ,and in turn a decrease in the demand for them which would lead to the very layoffs they were trying to evade on the first place?
Just wanted to say thanks for giving me some ideas about a paper I'm writing at the moment. Also, I don't know if I'm blind but, could you please post the links to the sources you're getting your information on. I'm sure there are others who could be writing papers about the video game industry.
Edit: - about the video game industry, besides me.
I feel for the layoff employees but not the devs
Soon it'll just be Blizzvision, 2k, and EA. Yay...
Bad management can happen in any industry
It does everyday.
Somehow I feel like it's connected to micro transactions.
LtVax27 alot of the games these developers made do not have micro transactions.
The lack of micro transactions are the reason these studios aren’t making enough money to pay their employees. What some gamers refuse to acknowledge is that making a game now is stupid expensive.
Devs and publishers just need to up the price of games to $70 to mitigate the cost of development
Sara - No; Cost of Development needs to chill out.
The technology is getting better and better, making game development waaaay easier than ever before, but they’re still outpacing advancements in cost of development.
Not everything needs to have realism or be open world.
I don’t work in the game industry but I work in film which has strong parallels to the game’s industry (which they briefly touched on), I can safely say crunch alone isn’t the sole cause of all of the chaos, shutdowns, and whatever else in either industry. For some people it is, not everyone likes working 12’s for weeks/months. I’m typing this late at night during a crunch too, voluntarily I might add. But crunch can mean higher paychecks too, which is a decent motivator. You’ll see younger people especially those without kids/marriage doing the most crunch so quite the opposite of what they said about millennials. Anyways, there’s no real “one answer” as to why some places just crap out. These industries are complex, but as you guys are aware they are project based. Sometimes they don’t get enough projects or income. Sometimes the CEO’s make some sort of bad decision that ruins the company (not always one big decision but several bad ones over time). I admit I’m feeling the same tiredness and urge for change that many of those game employees are probably feeling. I’ve been working in film for 6ish years and although each contract provides decent money, it’s a struggle, (mentally and physically). Sudden studio closures or layoffs happen in film too, so I sometimes fear that. A more stable career sounds like a dream.
only one person ever gets fired, it's always Craig...
No one likes him!
I hate Craig
I'm blaming Micro-transactions...
I have a baby and I bought the nes classic and SNES classic because I want to raise her on the good stuff I have literally more games than I could ever play. N games coming out now with micro transactions make me want to stay away from new games. Company's always blame that I have to sell certain amount some copies to make a profit. I say that's just mismanagement. If they didn't blow so much money they wouldn't have to sell so many copies. Too many companies want to be big and there's only so much room and so Big you can get before you collapse. Like all these games with services. You can only have so many multiplayer games. Before nobody can be around to play on because there's too many
I think there's saturation and price resistance going on. How many people own more games than they have time to play? I'd wager a lot.
I think somebody forgot to add the end slate for this video
#justtryingtobehelpful
Developers need to unionize, that would help the entire industry. It helped the voice actors. Just follow that model and ask for reasonable 'gets', and just start there... The entire industry would see an improvement.
Interesting people seem not to stay in the industry around the same amount of time we give a console for life
Maybe the 60$ per game really is not enough anymore for games...
Is there a link to the pc gamer article? I went on the website, and there is no description on rooster teeth videos there it seems.
Gus looks like he is starving.
Looks like Capcom shouldn’t of did the partnership with Xbox with the Dead Rising series.
Yes I agree with you here and that same goes with Tomb Raider.
Orrrrr maybe Vancouver shouldn't have made Dead Rising 4 a bad game?
Dee B I think the bigger deal was just the fact that Dead Rising 4 sucked... I mean the exclusivity deal is definitely part of it but the game being bad was the bigger deal
Microsoft Studios hired 600 developers.
But Capcom doesn't need to worry about Capcom Vancouver because they already have a successful zombie franchise.
Since Resident Evil 2 remake has created a lot of hype it's going to bring the money in so Capcom doesn't care about losing money
Runic? When? Jebus o_O was looking forward to hob.....
Support your favorite studios!
I honestly hope Bethesda doesn't shut down.
Judging by what they are doing right now?
I kinda hope they go bankrupt and sell Fallout/Elder Scrolls to CDPR.
i'd say they are far from bankrupt at this point.
Hopefully Bethesda does but CDProjektred and Guerilla shutting down would suck.
Co-op game companies
I guess we will see less AAA games, probably in the shape of bigger games that need more people to be created. In the positive side i hope this will push for some of these people to create medium to small sized companies to create independent games with new ideas :)
People just can't hack it new and creative and innovating ideas with real originality is hard to come by these Developers make half-ass work and then wonder why their Studio shut down cost and demand that's what it is it's all apart of the business
400% turn over? Sounds about right, though I'm in a way different kind of field. I work with people that have disabilities and I heard that in other part of the corporation I work for Supervisors last about 3 months. My part seem to be okay, though most of our old supervisors stepped down before corporate started to reorganize our section (we got bought out, and that company got bought out).But most of us that are around (including supervisors) like this kind of work and stay, even with wage being lower then we would like, because we like this line of work. But lots of new hires ether don't stay or end up getting fired because they ether can't take this kind of work or want to be paid to do nothing.
I say if the game isn't ready the ship don't ship. it's really the developers that have the power. they can't get fired if they did. who would finish the game? I would tell the boss's to suck it.
THQ Nordic is quite literally the last hope for AA development.
Even the average/casual gamer is noticing the egregious actions of these AAA game companies. And developers are fed up with the working conditions. So everyone is buying indie games and or playing free to play. Thus we are seeing a ripple affect throughout the whole industry big and small.. My theory at least.
What they're noticing is that artists have become illiterate and ignorant of technological foundations, and that consumers have been led to believe that reduction of product quality in support of inferior platforms is acceptable practice. Teach ambition, rather than penny pinching.
True dat.
WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!
Your annotations are missing.
The reason why large game developers have inflating budgets has nothing to do with gamers. Companies compete with each other, not for our dollars, per say, but for as a pissing contest. Your open world is big? Well mine is bigger. Your open world has stuff to do every ten steps? Well mine has stuff to do every 5 steps. Your game was noted as having the best graphics in 2017? Well this year I'll win. Your microtransactions made you 2 billion dollars? Well I have a skim I think will get me 3. And so on and so on. As with so many businesses that grow too large, they have gone well beyond the realm of healthy competition. Mid-ranged developers are failing because they want to be AAA developers and try to bite off far more than they can chew. And indi developers...Well, some will stay small because they want to stay small and are content with their profits and don't want to deal with all the baggage that comes with AAA. Some will become bigger, and most of those will bite off too much, and the rest will be bought by EA.
ultimately the layed off developers are really only gonna make it by learning another language for a big gaming country out in europe or japan. i'd imagine the game industry needs more bilingual workers for various reasons.
Is it just me or is this a little bit suspicious a bunch of zombies creators have been shutting down lately visceral games Telltale and one of capcom's teams they all worked on zombie games Dead Space Dead Rising The Walking Dead it's a little bit weird my theory is that it's just the releasing too many zombie games and they had enough and they said no and then shut the company down because visceral was working on supposedly Dead space 4 and they weren't supposed to work on that and they were working on Star Wars at the time now there are like okay so this is probably what happened to the downfalls they shut it down because they don't want to do Star Wars. I just think it's a little bit suspicious
If video games can't be made without exploiting the people who make them? Then video games shouldn't be made anymore. Game workers need a union.
Atary77 it's not exploiting If the employees choose to be there. Stop with the victimization.
@@EraFitnessify choose to be there? Tell me of a life where I can quit my job that I probably worked my ass off to get, get another one immediately, not worry about bills... that life sounds awesome
That's my moral hahaha...ha
It's all fortnight's fault
How tho
Is America and Western Area gonna have another Gaming Crash?
Hm...
Crossplay for all systems this way your games game community stays and keeps playing and keeps buying and building the game case in point gta 5 or fortnight and minecraft
God knows why these gaming companies don't work 12 hour shifts 24 hrs a day 7 days a week then no one has to do crunch time and everyone gets good time off for families. better for everyone and the game.
Games are getting to expensive to make
Wow that many. Are they not getting the funds they need.
It's *easy* to blame game publishers, but...maybe *ALL GAMERS should support indie games!*
This goes for critics & game websites (Gamespot, The Know, IGN, etc). The HYPE for small games should be just as big as the Hype for AAA games.
For the love of the industry, STOP OVERSPENDING YOUR BUDGET
Not everything needs to be hyper-realistic, open world, where your choices create a different ending.
If Indies can become profitable with only a fraction of the funding and manpower, then clearly its a problem of the AAA industry.
EA wants to offer $10/hr to someone with an industry specific degree.
Maybe if you didn’t hire 3,000 people between Development, production and marketing, you’d be able to take risks and still make money.
But no, THAT amount of profit isn’t enough.
They need the whole cake and your neighbors cake, too.
Too much competition, look how many games come out for Switch, there are a lot of good Switch Indies I don't buy because there are just too many games from both Nintendo, Sony, and 3rd party.
Gaming is pretty predictable the reason most companies fail is because they ignore KISS... Keep It Simple Stupid. 🤔
It’s mobile gaming’s fault. Boycott mobile gaming and only buy console/PC gaming.
Point
BRIIIIIAAAAAAAAANNNNN
Thanks tRump.
Crunch time in media is normal. The issue is to be transparent with your workforce, telling them that crunch will happen, but these are the benefits and rewards for doing so and then the ball is on the employee's hand, they will decide if being there or not is alright. But you have to be transparent and fair. If the person in question feels that his/her effort has worth and that they are respected, usually they themselves agree and give their best to do crunch. But the moment you think you are been exploited or enslaved, its all over with the person.
As long as CD Projekt Red is still okay and we get Cyberpunk 2077 i'm fine with anything.
This was great. Please do more discussions like this, It's needed if anything is going to change.
My gut would say Unionize...my brain says..oh hell no!!!
Imagine how bad it would be if Rodham was in office. Scary thought.
Ok so factories,stores, resteraunts, e.t.c have been closing down in mass quantities for 20 or 30 years but 10 game companies close and it make news. Wtf?
skinnyguy 32 because this is a tech/game news channel?
Telltale games sucked ass I'm glad the went out of business.
anyone else think Gus has twigs for arms?
"Do you even lift Bro?"
Dude im not gona ever bash someone's build, but i look at this way. If you where hanging from a cliffs edge, you gotta be able to be strong enough to lift your self up, at minimum.😒
Third? Wait does this matter?
5th?
First sense no one said it yet
Second