*Got a ton of folks busting my balls about the recession talk. No recession has been declared, and GDP is growing. The dialogue with chat was whether the data is reliable.*
realistically we are. every recession ever, the data numbers have been wrong (if on purpose or not) and it wasn’t declared until years later i think the gaming sphere as a whole is also in its own bubble and having problems ontop of that but as a whole the united states is in a rough spot at the moment
They changed the definition of what a recession is like 2 years ago to specifically avoid saying we’re in a recession for political gain, brother i love you but pay attention to the world around you.
Just came out of my Finance class and my professor works with a firm who manages about $50 million in investiments and has been working since the 2008 recession - he did say during the lecture that we aren't in a recession but things are looking bad and the costs from the previous inflation rates haven't gone done. Like talking about which bills to pay rathet than paying all your bills at once bad.
@@Akfourtysvn bro he has a kid. Us parents don’t have time to keep up with the world! We just roll with it at this point, just as long as the family has a place to live and a plate of food!
Yup sound like he got a rock shaped pc from starforge you should be check they're new lines of pc gaming built for gaming use the link so i get a little something, ANYWAYS Xurs always at the tower now feature exotics,
The thing is that they are not preoccupied with it being sustainable, they are preoccupied with the next quarter reports an stocks values. They don’t give a fuck about sustainability or the future or quality of the product, they want to make money and fuck off.
this has nothing to do with any of that. this has to do with redundancy and overlap reduction first and formost. ABK is a 10k people company. a ton of staffing, support, publishing, PR, finance and whatnot positions microsoft/xbox already have people and departments for. so you dont need 5 people in 3 different places doing literally the same job. this is about reduction of overlap and when microsoft aquired 10k people they started working to integrade them, and found all these postions are now obsolete. happnes, thats not a games industry thing, this has nothing to do with microsoft bad, its a burocracy thing, and happens everywhere.
Yeah it's everywhere, theyve been saying the younger generation will likely never own a home if it keeps up. And I have been waiting to buy a car they are finally going down in price but yes they've been extremely overpriced.
@@SJxGrind never own a home. Im lucky enough to be in a home at least thanks to teamwork from me mom, big bro and the cousin. Its the only reason i have a chance at studying peacefully
@@zunny9040 I'm glad you are thankful for that, my parents died, most of my family is either estranged or live in different states, so it's basically just me and while progress is slow it's been happening. I wish you the best of luck with your studies bro
I’m in the corporate AV (audio visual) events business and I can tell you firsthand that it’s bad in almost every part of the country. Be it tech, nursing, business owners, retailers, etc., almost all of them talk about layoffs and the need to meet numbers. Even in the company I work at, the execs at the top are cutting hours left and right for full time employees because no one is doing as many events now as they used to because companies are scared of not hitting their quarterly projections. It’s awful and I hate it.
If corporate execs were under just as much threat of being let go for poor product releases, then they would probably stress the product to be the best it could be, just as much as the person doing the developing.
@Lorentz_Driver oh they will be if shit keeps going the way they are. Don't get me wrong, i believe the execs should take a hit for the hardships but it isn't how it goes.
It rough. I'm a junior environment artist and finding job is almost impossible since i have to compete with all the senior that get laid off and i'm in one of the biggest city for video game (Montréal)
commi vibes is hella gay. people arent guilty for doing better than you. life is a bitch, an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. youre entitled to nothing. revolutions create vacuums of power that lead to the same kinds of situations @@MatthewHerman-xx8bw
Dude we’ve been in a recession for a while now. The gov’t will try to not call it that because they don’t wanna hurt their chances in November. The tech bubble is also bursting
Except we’re not in a recession by any standard definition. In the second quarter of 2024, GDP grew, consumer spending grew, and inflation rate has gotten back to a manageable level. Unemployment rate grew by a fraction of a percentage point but it is still very low. I’m not saying that there aren’t problems with the economy, but these problems are systemic and have been decades in the making. But saying we are in a recession is just not true.
Bro is huffing the strongest corporate copium. Local businesses have shut down en masse. Jobs have been lost by the swaths due to ai. The only People who think otherwise are ppl with a silver spoon in your mouth, born into wealth.
Happened (at least in video game world) sometime but it often either small indie studio passionate. Or like the director of the game love and trust is team so much that he don't mind being pay less since he know their project will work in the long term. Bit it rare
And if they got paid just a little less they’d still be filthy rich beyond what they can do with their money. Giving back to the people is a wonderful investment into the future anyhow.
A lot of companies, in Asia, take a fail from the top up, not the top down. The execs in Nintendo take pay cuts before layoffs of it's workforce, because they know if the company is failing expectations, it's leaderships fault so they take accountability. It's rare but it's happens. Stateside, they should do that more. Pete Parsons can spare a car or 3 to save his employees. Also, I hope you banned those insensitive douches sayin "Who cares?" These are people. And we enjoy what they made for us, everyday. We should be grateful and give a fuck about them continuing to do that.
It's not just stateside, it's everywhere in the West. Ubisoft execs knowingly hired tons of people they were going to fire later, just to give an impression of growth to attract investments and government subsidies. Execs are not in the business of providing stable employment, nor making good product; their job is to secure investment and satisfy shareholders, nothing else. This is why you should have unions, folks.
When you get up in the morning, eat breakfast, get dressed, and then play video games for 8-10 hours a day, and get your information from twitter/X, twitch chat and reacting to Asmongold videos, you tend to not have a firm grasp of what is actually going on in the world.
O you have no fucking clue. We have been getting report since the mass being sprees in 2021 that tech were hiring people they don’t have a job for or even plans for them to have work so that the complains could starve their competitors of workers. Like how do all the talentless freaks that think their economics master minds not references that?
"Are we in a recession?" Wanna have a super fun time?! Look up the definition of recession before ~3 years ago. They literally CHANGED the definition of what a recession is/was to cover up the fact we are, in fact, in a recession... so yes, indeed we are!
Pleasing shareholders is more important to big companies than looking after their people. Recession or not, publicly traded big corporates will always treat their staff terribly.
There’s a ton of smoke and mirrors in our economy right now. “Inflation” and “downsizing” get thrown around as an excuse-the traditional economic indicators are good… but, more people are unemployed or underemployed every day. Consumer prices continue to rise. In contrast, corporate profits, executive compensation, and dividend payouts are seeing record highs. All this is an end result of deregulation and the corporate oligarchy that’s taking over the US government. When we allowed dark money into politics, and when Citizens United came down, all of the incentives were aligned for corporations to spend a little to buy favourable laws, etc., and rake in extra profits. The net effect is the transfer of wealth from the average citizen to the few, top wealthiest people. It’s unsustainable in the long run. (FYI, my wife and I have worked in banking our entire careers. It’s been getting worse and worse each year.)
I couldn't agree with everything being said here more. The future is looking pretty bleak financially unless we do a pretty drastic course correction and soon.
this is ass backwards. statism is the one bottlenecking everything, only mega corporations with their lobbying can buy their way in while actual small business are being strangled with rules, regs, taxes. gov holds they keys and $ buys access to it. just like gov today- we dont have a income issue, we have a spending issue. I dont give a shit about big business, its gov selling access that is. please go start a business today, employee people, and say something as dumb as deregulations are hurting every day Americans
@@desons9481 You can blame anyone in power, they're all against you, and pretending one is more with you than the other is delusional at best. Corporations and Politicians just use honey dipped words to make you mad at the wrong things.
What he said wasn’t wrong. He’s saying he thinks we are in a recession (which I’m thinking it’s closer to a depression), but the powers that be are saying it’s not true.
@@MatthewHerman-xx8bwI don't think it has literally anything to do with his income. he could absolutely have just not known. I didn't either and it never crossed my mind until he brought it up
I live under a rock, and I have a simple part time job, and after seeing all these comments I'm curious. Are we actually in a recession or possibly a depression? I have no clue at all about what's been going on the past year
The level of indifference and lack of empathy shown by some chatters and commenters here is mind boggling! And they’re mostly adults. Sheesh. And trying to normalize this with comparison to other industries as if it’s that’s an acceptable trend and not dehumanized ways of running businesses (when there are better options while still being profitable and competitive)! I’ve had to lay people off in my line of work in tech. It’s easy to just look at stats & numbers and ignore the human toll it has on every individual and its ripple effects. People’s spirit is broken after believing that meritocracy and hard work would have guaranteed them success. Only someone who hasn’t been part of such firings or entered a field that already normalized it (marketing & service is notorious) would ever feel okay with this.
Meritocracy is propaganda, and the concept of merit is entirely worthless other than for making people follow directions out of faith. It is literally just a replacement for the functions that faith used to fulfill. Better for people to finally stop believing propaganda.
Imagine a world where almost every aspect of life is too expensive to afford, but when a question about the problem arises it’s swiftly met with, “EVERYTHING’S FINE! Look at this totally normal and unbiased graph that says it’s all good”. And then a mass amount of people see that and say, “oh yeah, guess your right,” and continue to wallow in their hardships as they vote for the same people who put them there. Imagine…
Statistics show that wages are going up faster than inflation. But when you actually use those numbers properly and take out the top earners it shows that wages aren't going up faster. The rich love to tell us that everything is fine and it's our fault if we can't afford things while they make more money than is feasible to spend
Not being in a recession doesn't mean everything's fine. The economy sucks for poor people and folks are getting poorer. But prices in consumer markets could twice as high and you could still not be in a recession. Understand that the overall economy is not tied to working-class money.
@@Gabdubelet’s be honest most gammers would flunk a high school economics class so baldy new numbers would need to be invented to give them their final grade.
I don't like the commentary that gamers and developers oppose each other, that gamers shouldn't care what happens to developers. Developers literally make the games we play. Executives and shareholders exploit the developers to get as much game out of them as possible while paying as little as they can get away with - for every senior engineer making $250,000, there's 3 junior engineers and 10 QA testers making just above minimum wage. Those same executives and shareholders exploit gamers by demanding that devs implement microtransactions and battlepasses - those things aren't gameplay, they're toll bridges to get to fun that's been offshored from the rest of the game. No game designer would spontaneously invent paid cosmetic horse armor as part of a fun play experience. Devs and gamers are being exploited by the same people, and should be on the same side.
Its almost like doubling, and in some cases more than doubling, your workforce for expectations of exponential growth based on extreme circumstances that no reasonable person would expect to last forever was a bad idea. Then to top it all off, that extra staff hasn't produced any additional content or improved the wuality of existing content.
Execs don't see layoffs as a bad thing. Their job is to secure investments and ensure shareholder satisfaction. They're not in the business of providing employment, nor making actually-good products. Bloating their workforce temporarily to give investors the impression of growth, knowing they'll fire people later, was totally the right thing to do in their eyes. Those hires were not about producing anything through actual work. This is why you need syndicalism.
People acting like Cross is the devil for asking if they're in a recession, would you just rather he not ask? Some people just aren't as clued in to grand scale economics, some people just stick to their bubbles and take life as it comes because constantly reading into this shit is depressing as fuck.
Well a basic part of knowing if your in a recession is to compare a lot of factors from a period of 18 months(they many have changed it to 12) and see if their has been less then desired growth. Unlike a boom or a depression you don’t know if your in a recession till your well in or past one.
How about a policy that forces corporate america to lay off a number of senior executives in a commensurate rate per the layoff. So if you layoff 10% of your workforce, you need to layoff 10% of your executive staff.
"Are we in a recession?" UH YES! We have been for the last 3.5 years, WORLD WIDE. The 2020 pandemic debacle hurt a LOT of countries. Man, must be nice to be so rich as to not notice...
The inverted yield curve would scream yes, we've been in one since 2022, possibly earlier. Most if not all mainstream media or sources that are politically backed would fight tooth and nail to get you to believe otherwise. That said, everyone's personal economy is different.
This is why anti-trust policy is so important. Often times these acquisitions and mergers negatively effect employees because it stifles competition and ends in layoffs.
Atztecross, what did you think was going to happen after 4 years of covid and massive hiring of developers? That time has ended and what's happening is the consequences of the whole world going back to work. Everyone should have seen this coming. These layoffs are expected.
saying "there's no reason to care about this unless your a developer" is plain wrong, if you want development team to make better and better games, be more efficient, be faster, you want them to continue working with each, not just because of moral in the studio, but because the more they work together the more proficient they become at doing so, not to mention other stuff like happiness and creativity driving
@@sodasback1173 Propaganda is effective. You tell people that union jobs actually do better work, and they don't believe you, then turn around and wonder why hires are treated as disposable means to secure investment and why corpo business models shifted from making actually-good products to making money from initial investments and letting product failures be write-offs. Corpos are incentivized to run investment scams instead of actual work.
Its the WEF time frame 2030. You will own nothing and be happy! All the big wigs and "in it to win it" politicians and celebrities go to their conferences. A lot is pointing there.
It’s a double edged sword, because WHEN you rely on the East for games they pick up on bad American culture. Capcom and Square Enix both have a US division in California, made for more “inclusion” in video games, so even Eastern devs ruin games, so there’s a bad with the good. Gaming just needs to…focus on gaming and cut out the politics and greed. So many eyes are on Nintendo now because they focus on the games. Once that new Switch is revealed, the narrative will be set in stone
It's insane that top executives have their jobs while the games they were supposed to be in charge of failed to launch or turned out horrible while regular devs get the boot.
Execs are not in the business of providing stable employment, nor making good product; their job is to secure investment and satisfy shareholders, nothing else. This is why you should have unions, folks.
I'll tell you this about 07-08. I had to have a family connection to get me into a job as a seasonal farm worker shoveling dirt for 10hrs a day at 8 dollars an hour. When season was over I couldn't even move into the packaging facility because they had tenured employees from outside that moved in. Instead I rode a bike 3 miles to a work office at 5am hoping some contractor would yell at me to jump in the bed of a pickup so I could shovel more dirt for 7.50 an hour. Those were the only jobs I could get.
Worse than 08, guy. Nobody really addressed the 08 recession the way that it should have been, we just bailed out and carried on. And that would have been "fine" if things had actually carried on. But Covid blitzed in and forced the same sudden economic contraction, and all the progress that we made between 08 and '22ish went right out the window. We're headed for a crash. I could go on at length about how we got here and what could be done about it, but this isn't the place.
I'm not surprised by all these layoffs and will say that this isn't over. Game devs and publishers were making mad bank during the pandemic, and now that it's over, they're bleeding cash, so this was an eventuality
Yep. Corpos are in the business of making money, not providing employment. Those people only got hired insofar as it attracted investment and subsidies by showing a veneer of growth. It was only about making a quick buck. Sadly, employees buy into the propaganda that if they work hard enough they'll be rewarded, even though profits aren't about work, at all.
As a developer who was laid off last summer, I think executive and middle management salaries are out of control and timeliness have been so compressed, that it really is astounding to me. I think they are backwards on infrastructure and organizational structure as well. CEOs and middle managers don't need to be paid so much. They aren't the ones playing the games.
People getting poorer doesn't mean the economy as a whole is in recession. People still believe that western economies are based on labor, even though they are not. We could fire 1/3rd of all workers and could still have "line go up". Workers getting poorer is not indicative of a recession; the economy just isn't about people at all.
In 08 it was a Job and Homes thing, today it is everything including food, Homes, Insurance, etc. is escalating in price exponentially, that did not happen in 08...
When I had the opportunity to visit Bungie in Bellevue last year I was surprised how many gaming studios are in a very small radius. Names like Bungie, Nintendo, Valve, and Microsoft are some just off the top of my head. Its crazy how they are all getting hit at the same time, even my friend who I met out there who worked on the Pokemon TCG was laid off, my heart goes out to everyone affected with these layoffs
@@AreYouTriggered24 not even just outlaws, I think mirage and even more so, skull and bones, are even better examples of the how badly ubisoft is spiraling
"Are we in a recession." Brother we are in the worst economical crisis the world has ever seen. The only sector that was experiencing growth these last few years was the tech sector and that bubbles bursting. The US dollar is losing value and we are $35 trillion in debt. The amount of money the US government is taking from taxes and other means isn't even covering the interest of that debt anymore. Governmental spending is at record highs, mega corps experienced record high profits right after covid and are now burning out employees left and right as the economy started slowing down.
Based on the economist data, apparently their are more jobs available and growing and demonstrates their are we are not in a recession at all. Something about that data isn't correct if the prices of products and services keeps going up and the people keep losing their jobs from all sectors of work. Even looking for jobs, some companies create job positions that don't get fulfilled, are reposted, or left untouched for a certain amount of weeks or even months. Apparently it's called ghost job postings. The ghost jobs posting is important because companies indicate they are "always hiring" but many apply and the job continues to be open but never fulfilled which leads to being a job that is forever open. Making it a ghost job posted. The reason I bring this up is because economists say the job market is booming but how can you say it is if these job postings exist but never get fulfilled?
The US isn't in a recession, but that doesn't mean that the economy is healthy. The average American has steadily been losing buying power since the 70s as more and more wealth gets consolidated at the top. Productivity is at all-time highs, yet wages haven't kept pace for decades. One the China front: There were about 10k layoffs in the gaming sector last year in China. There's a trend towards market consolidation and monopolization from the larger studios, much like we have seen in the NA market. Also, the CCP did attempt to crackdown on gaming, particularly amongst young people. It hurt the industry to the tune of $80 billion, so they've been walking those policies back.
Honestly the reason the west is having so much trouble with films and games lately is because those companies have been pandering and bringing ideologies to a very selective crowd that is very small instead of the whole community… That is the truth. If companies instead made games that are great and fun that cater to the whole gaming/fanbase communities then I really believe that everything would have gone and be better. We have had films and tv shows that ignore source material/lore/community sentiment and instead follow their own ideologies or who the material is being made for and just end up destroying lore and any future interest from the whole main community. Gaming companies have been on a downhill since the rise of live service games and the crazy increase on monetizing every piece of a game, add the increased pandering to a certain community and even allowing certain people with specific ideologies make important creative decisions that again change the direction of the game and who it’s made for. Instead of making fun games being competitive or not but fun and for the whole gaming community we instead have gotten let downs that again destroy morale for future games and at times don’t even get a crumb of of the gaming community pie because of their decisions. We need companies films/shows/games to again make material for who it’s made for, for who the fans are.. messages can be made and the best messages in the past have not been on the forefront but creatively placed to make sense and create sentiment, a message should be created that everyone can understand and enjoy but it should never be made to be the only reason material is made otherwise it leads failure. That is the reason, not that hard to see and it shouldn’t be hard to acknowledge
This is not surprising with the acquisition, I'm surprised it wasn't done sooner. I been through a acquisitions before and support roles like HR, Finance, Marketing, IT and here probably QA, any roles that criss cross with the parent company are usually the first to go within 6 months after handover.
@@krazieyez2429 It never will either cross prolly makes over 150k a year on average since he's triple dipping in the most lucrative sources of income for content creation and I honestly I wouldn't be surprised if he's even up to 200k.
AAA game development has gotten significantly more expensive to the point where they have to expect their new game to be the next “big thing” whereas smaller passion driven studios who can create games of similar quality have a much higher profit margin from a game blowing up.
Xbox is losing its complete identity. What is Xbox? Is it a console? A brand on multiple consoles? I doubt that's what consumers have in mind when they think of Xbox. It's watering itself down year after year until it becomes something we can't identify nor care for. Such a bizarre series of events
If we're honest the gaming development industry is massively bloated in terms of staff. Especially where DEI & consultancy is concerned adding onto staff. Look at the Batman Arkham games and their writers. First game had 2-3 writers where suicide squad had almost 20 with a good chunk being from Sweet Baby inc. That kind of additional staffing comes at significant cost to the AAA industry trying to make games. At the same time the ability for indie developers and small studio's to make amazing games from Stardew Valley, Wukong, Pal World and others are directly eating into the AAA industries profits. You then look at Microsoft, Ubisoft, Sony making massive financal mistakes investing absurd amounts of money into projects like Concord that are doomed to fail. You're right that developers are switching to mobile because it's a numbers game in terms of customers.
as a political science bachelor degree holder, and someone who watches economics and politics pretty closely: yes, we could be in a recession. job market is cooling, but not cold. this also looks bad for the tech sector specifically because of the boom of hiring in 2020. they can’t afford to pay for them anymore. borrowing money was super cheap just a few years ago and now it’s expensive.
Looses in employment doesn't mean the economy as a whole is in recession. People still believe the propaganda that our western economies are based on employed labor; they're not. We could fire 1/3rd of all workers and could still have "line go up". The economy as a whole is just not tied to working-class money at all.
Sick of what nonsense? A weak economy? Advancements in technology reducing the need for labour? You want companies to hire more people because more people=better product?
It might be an issue after three years. I just lost my job last week They came in, sat me down and told me hey it’s not you bro not your job not your performance Here. we gotta make some cuts. in your position is being cut out you’ll be re-hireable but at this moment, we were no longer need your services and when we get everything back up and running again, if you’re still looking for employment, you can always reapply here. Saddest shit I heard bkuz I put in a lot of work hard at that for nothing to be thrown away. It sucks. But this isn’t nothing like the last recession I was in I’ve been working since 1999. 2008-2010 was hard on me jobs were hiring and firing left and right.
We aren't in a recession, but we're cooling down after the gaming boom during covid. And looking at the broader job market, openings are at a 3 year low. Companies and employees are holding out, being an election year has a lot to do with that. The "line must go up" mentality continues to take it's toll across all sectors, but especially the gaming industry.
The reason game development is so expensive in America is because we pay the CEO’s of the companies WAY too much money. Bobby Kotick took a pay package of $155 million (let that sink in) while the CEO of Nintendo takes home about $2.5 million a year, and at one point took a 50% pay cut to prevent layoffs at Nintendo. So I’m no financial expert but I may have isolated the problem… 🤦
Dude this shit is what happens in this industry, I mean I can go back in the 90s 2000s 2010s and find so many articles of these huge corps letting people go in droves, it happens when they make big acquisitions... Jfc it's so tiresome seeing vids on things that are commonplace in this business. Like little kids that don't understand or know what the grown up world is like
Word; I was in the advertising industry for over a decade before I got sick of seeing 2 years at a single agency as a long stint. Some industries just are this way; tech and entertainment just seem to be heading in that direction as the people at the top treat the companies and clients like baseball cards. Oh wait it's 2024; like pokemon cards? Wait it's not 2010 ... like ... vape cannisters? What do people trade these days I'm old
@@hasercorp8140 yea I mean these younger generations, it's as if they only know what the last 5 years is... They have no idea about life in their little bubbles. I rememeber monster and I mean monster layoffs in decades past, it just the nature of that industry. These tubers are so... Coddled, they simply come across with zero life experiences
This is what happens when an industry is allowed to buy up competition left and right. You wind up with redundant shared services across dozens of studios all under a single umbrella. It's natural for these companies to lay off HR, Legal, support, etc. across their subsidiaries and consolidate into a single tower for those shared services. If we want this to stop, we have to stop allowing studios to buy each other up left and right.
No, we’re not in a recession and neither are we hitting any of the markers that predict recessions. we do know that starting in 2021 there were massive hiring spree by tech companies, partially for growth and also partially to make sure those employees didn’t go to competitors. There was an insane bubble across the sector starting in 2021. I know there’s a lot of dumb fucks out there that don’t know anything pretending that their genius is on the economy . But we know companies were hiring people to do their work because they thought doing zero work for them was better than those employees doing work for their competitors. It was absolutely bullshit. Insane what was going on from that 2021 hiring bubble
Western economies? Most of Europe functions as some form of socialism govt. You're comparing apples to oranges. Also, you mention the economy doing well. This economy is Not doing well. Inflation is ridiculously high which is tied directly to govt overspending. So when this govt cuts a check to another country it is contributing directly to the problem. And what the US a powerhouse was that it was self reliant. It wasn't until globalist policies came into play that put this country at risk. NAFTA for example was one of the worst things that could've happened. Followed by the exodus of companies to other countries where regulations/taxes weren't as harmful.
Starfield doing good is a myth. The game cost with marketing around $200 mln and generated overall revenue of $100 mln. and now, more people are playing Oblivion or Fallout 3 than Starfield.
I'm an old man. I've lived through recessions. This is not a recession. This is about game studios swelling beyond their means during the pandemic. People are not spending money on games like they did during that time because they're working, going to school and living life outside of their homes.
It's important to note that the memo or email said mostly corporate and support roles. The actual devs would not be considered corporate or support. Finance and administrative folks would be considered corporate and lower level IT specialists and software engineers would be support (bug fixes). The people who are considered the game developers are the ones working on updates, new dlcs, and new games. Those jobs were likely unaffected for the most part. Most companies consolidate finance and admin positions when acquiring a company, but keep the workforce developing the products (depending on the product).
It’s the same thing happening with Bungie. All of these companies overhired and overspent when gaming business exploded during Covid. Now that profits are down and gaming isn’t making nearly as much, companies are cutting costs and essentially just returning to normal. It’s nonsensical to believe that companies should be able to just make it work when they’re operating at double capacity in comparison to pre-Covid. Does it suck? Yes. Does it make sense? Also yes.
Part of the problem is also the fact that the entertainment industry had a massive boom through covid. Shareholders expect the same profits, studios aren't getting that because a majority of the population doesn't have infinite free time anymore so they have to scale back to where they were at in like 2018 and try to keep the shareholders happy with now a smaller workforce and more profit. Totally unsustainable.
We are not in a recession. The gaming industry, like all industries, expects continuous growth, and for some reason also expected the pandemic boost to the industry to continue. Now that numbers are more in line with pre-pandemic numbers, the industry is cutting back HARD as an over correction, not out of fear of insolvency but rather to keep profits rising in the short term.
Tech jobs are on a decline for years. Some manufacturing in general are struggling. I got laid off due to lack of work a couple weeks ago. These are electrical devices. Business was booming during Covid and then last year we had over a year and a half of worth of inventory just sitting there. Well, my job needs new production to stay busy. Weeks on end I sat and did nothing. So I wasn’t surprised I lost my job. But I start a new job that pays a larger salary and doing the same job.
We had two years 2 1/2 years of Covid where nobody was able to work companies didn’t put out anything. There were no new games. There was barely any development going on and now you wonder why all these companies are having a late people off you think it’s some kind of anomaly it was to be expected.
Something has to change with gaming companies and gaming developers. Without companies, money to get games off the ground is much more difficult, while without developers a game doesn't get made. Developers can not be treated as disposable assets as they need reasonable levels of job security.
*Got a ton of folks busting my balls about the recession talk. No recession has been declared, and GDP is growing. The dialogue with chat was whether the data is reliable.*
realistically we are. every recession ever, the data numbers have been wrong (if on purpose or not) and it wasn’t declared until years later
i think the gaming sphere as a whole is also in its own bubble and having problems ontop of that but as a whole the united states is in a rough spot at the moment
They changed the definition of what a recession is like 2 years ago to specifically avoid saying we’re in a recession for political gain, brother i love you but pay attention to the world around you.
Bro I love your videos and I don't even play destiny anymore but c'mon man your smarter then that take a look at the state of things here in America
Where the hell has Cross been living? Are we in a recession? Are you dumb?
Just came out of my Finance class and my professor works with a firm who manages about $50 million in investiments and has been working since the 2008 recession - he did say during the lecture that we aren't in a recession but things are looking bad and the costs from the previous inflation rates haven't gone done.
Like talking about which bills to pay rathet than paying all your bills at once bad.
Cross asking Twitch chat if we’re in a recession is the blind leading the blind 😂
"Those cuts include the cancelation of at least 1 game project at Blizzard."
The next line "no games, devices and experiences will be cut."
@@sithazzazzin7329 Included*, not include. That's the 'last time' cuts vs the 'this time' cuts.
We’ve been in a recession. It’s crazy he doesn’t keep up with the world😂
The humble doesnt care about how much money they make, the stupid dont understand where it goes@@Akfourtysvn
@@Akfourtysvn bro he has a kid. Us parents don’t have time to keep up with the world! We just roll with it at this point, just as long as the family has a place to live and a plate of food!
"Are we in a recession?"
Cross, where the FUCK have you been, under a rock shaped like a Starforge PC?
Dude I had to do a double take. I couldn't believe he actually said that 😭
Welcome to the world of a ignorant streamers.....
Streamer money hit different
Yup sound like he got a rock shaped pc from starforge you should be check they're new lines of pc gaming built for gaming use the link so i get a little something, ANYWAYS Xurs always at the tower now feature exotics,
We have been in a recession ...it is insane that he has no clue
Man it's almost like massive budgets on rushed projects is a bad way to sustain an industry! Who would've thought that?
People in general don't have money to spend, let alone on shitty AAA titles that the whole public lost faith in.
The thing is that they are not preoccupied with it being sustainable, they are preoccupied with the next quarter reports an stocks values. They don’t give a fuck about sustainability or the future or quality of the product, they want to make money and fuck off.
this has nothing to do with any of that. this has to do with redundancy and overlap reduction first and formost. ABK is a 10k people company. a ton of staffing, support, publishing, PR, finance and whatnot positions microsoft/xbox already have people and departments for. so you dont need 5 people in 3 different places doing literally the same job. this is about reduction of overlap and when microsoft aquired 10k people they started working to integrade them, and found all these postions are now obsolete.
happnes, thats not a games industry thing, this has nothing to do with microsoft bad, its a burocracy thing, and happens everywhere.
They really thought the lockdown boom was going to last. Literally every single American AAA studio bought that shit.
Doesn't matter what the budget is. The rich will still stomp all over the poor.
In the Interior Design industry and were fucked over here too! Nobody wants to spend on interior design after buying a vastly overpriced house.
Or vastly overpriced cars
Yeah it's everywhere, theyve been saying the younger generation will likely never own a home if it keeps up. And I have been waiting to buy a car they are finally going down in price but yes they've been extremely overpriced.
@@SJxGrind never own a home.
Im lucky enough to be in a home at least thanks to teamwork from me mom, big bro and the cousin.
Its the only reason i have a chance at studying peacefully
@@zunny9040 I'm glad you are thankful for that, my parents died, most of my family is either estranged or live in different states, so it's basically just me and while progress is slow it's been happening.
I wish you the best of luck with your studies bro
I’m in the corporate AV (audio visual) events business and I can tell you firsthand that it’s bad in almost every part of the country. Be it tech, nursing, business owners, retailers, etc., almost all of them talk about layoffs and the need to meet numbers. Even in the company I work at, the execs at the top are cutting hours left and right for full time employees because no one is doing as many events now as they used to because companies are scared of not hitting their quarterly projections. It’s awful and I hate it.
If corporate execs were under just as much threat of being let go for poor product releases, then they would probably stress the product to be the best it could be, just as much as the person doing the developing.
That isn't the biggest part of the problem though. The economy is struggling and now everyone is suffering
It's not necessarily the corporate execs' either shareholders play a part. Always want their pound of flesh.
@@Farmer1277 The execs aren't.
@Lorentz_Driver oh they will be if shit keeps going the way they are. Don't get me wrong, i believe the execs should take a hit for the hardships but it isn't how it goes.
It’s crazy how distant people are from what’s going on. Almost half of my buddies have been laid off 1-2 times in the last year
It rough. I'm a junior environment artist and finding job is almost impossible since i have to compete with all the senior that get laid off and i'm in one of the biggest city for video game (Montréal)
It’s because they’re bourgesie. They can’t relate to us. They ain’t in the same lane or
Game. Honestly it’s time to rise up and take it back
@@JustinSimoneau wish you luck!
commi vibes is hella gay. people arent guilty for doing better than you. life is a bitch, an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. youre entitled to nothing. revolutions create vacuums of power that lead to the same kinds of situations @@MatthewHerman-xx8bw
@@Mawler12 thanks
Dude we’ve been in a recession for a while now. The gov’t will try to not call it that because they don’t wanna hurt their chances in November. The tech bubble is also bursting
I was going to come in and say the same thing.
Except we’re not in a recession by any standard definition. In the second quarter of 2024, GDP grew, consumer spending grew, and inflation rate has gotten back to a manageable level. Unemployment rate grew by a fraction of a percentage point but it is still very low.
I’m not saying that there aren’t problems with the economy, but these problems are systemic and have been decades in the making.
But saying we are in a recession is just not true.
Bro is huffing the strongest corporate copium. Local businesses have shut down en masse. Jobs have been lost by the swaths due to ai. The only
People who think otherwise are ppl with a silver spoon in your mouth, born into wealth.
@@julius7539 Do you have any credible sources for all of that bs you just spat out
we are absolutely borrowing more than we produce. @@julius7539
My question is when will CEO’s accept that THEY need to be paied less
Happened (at least in video game world) sometime but it often either small indie studio passionate. Or like the director of the game love and trust is team so much that he don't mind being pay less since he know their project will work in the long term. Bit it rare
And if they got paid just a little less they’d still be filthy rich beyond what they can do with their money. Giving back to the people is a wonderful investment into the future anyhow.
Won't happen unless the entire industry crashes, let that video game crash come already..
Why would ceos want to make less money ?
That would require CEOS to have human morality and the ability to think in the long term to help their company.
They barely count as people.
A lot of companies, in Asia, take a fail from the top up, not the top down. The execs in Nintendo take pay cuts before layoffs of it's workforce, because they know if the company is failing expectations, it's leaderships fault so they take accountability. It's rare but it's happens. Stateside, they should do that more. Pete Parsons can spare a car or 3 to save his employees. Also, I hope you banned those insensitive douches sayin "Who cares?" These are people. And we enjoy what they made for us, everyday. We should be grateful and give a fuck about them continuing to do that.
It's not just stateside, it's everywhere in the West. Ubisoft execs knowingly hired tons of people they were going to fire later, just to give an impression of growth to attract investments and government subsidies. Execs are not in the business of providing stable employment, nor making good product; their job is to secure investment and satisfy shareholders, nothing else. This is why you should have unions, folks.
I forget people have money until they ask 'wait are we in a recession?' and then im smacked in the face by my poorness
RUclipsrs out of touch with reality? Whodathunkit
When you get up in the morning, eat breakfast, get dressed, and then play video games for 8-10 hours a day, and get your information from twitter/X, twitch chat and reacting to Asmongold videos, you tend to not have a firm grasp of what is actually going on in the world.
I'm guessing all of these layoffs for the last two years were the results of companies over hiring from the pandemic?
Big reason. Also advancements in technology.
Yes. That is one of the major reason
Yeah, it’s that and absurdly bad flops
O you have no fucking clue. We have been getting report since the mass being sprees in 2021 that tech were hiring people they don’t have a job for or even plans for them to have work so that the complains could starve their competitors of workers. Like how do all the talentless freaks that think their economics master minds not references that?
"Are we in a recession?"
Wanna have a super fun time?! Look up the definition of recession before ~3 years ago. They literally CHANGED the definition of what a recession is/was to cover up the fact we are, in fact, in a recession... so yes, indeed we are!
Since Fukashima they changed the lethal dose of radiation dynamics as well, they want us broke or dead
Pleasing shareholders is more important to big companies than looking after their people.
Recession or not, publicly traded big corporates will always treat their staff terribly.
There’s a ton of smoke and mirrors in our economy right now. “Inflation” and “downsizing” get thrown around as an excuse-the traditional economic indicators are good… but, more people are unemployed or underemployed every day. Consumer prices continue to rise.
In contrast, corporate profits, executive compensation, and dividend payouts are seeing record highs.
All this is an end result of deregulation and the corporate oligarchy that’s taking over the US government. When we allowed dark money into politics, and when Citizens United came down, all of the incentives were aligned for corporations to spend a little to buy favourable laws, etc., and rake in extra profits.
The net effect is the transfer of wealth from the average citizen to the few, top wealthiest people. It’s unsustainable in the long run.
(FYI, my wife and I have worked in banking our entire careers. It’s been getting worse and worse each year.)
citizens united decision was one of the biggest judicial blunders of the modern age. i agree on all other points as well
There are no economic indicators showing anything being good dude. Inflation is wrecking everything. We haven't see inflation this bad since the 80's.
I couldn't agree with everything being said here more. The future is looking pretty bleak financially unless we do a pretty drastic course correction and soon.
@@KristiStClair64the course correct solution is starting to look more and more violent.
this is ass backwards. statism is the one bottlenecking everything, only mega corporations with their lobbying can buy their way in while actual small business are being strangled with rules, regs, taxes. gov holds they keys and $ buys access to it. just like gov today- we dont have a income issue, we have a spending issue. I dont give a shit about big business, its gov selling access that is. please go start a business today, employee people, and say something as dumb as deregulations are hurting every day Americans
1:53 Yes. It's not just Game Devs, but all job sectors are experiencing layoffs, bankruptcies, and general economic downturns.
you can thank biden and kamala for the economy
@@desons9481 You can blame anyone in power, they're all against you, and pretending one is more with you than the other is delusional at best. Corporations and Politicians just use honey dipped words to make you mad at the wrong things.
@@desons9481 its worldwide. Same here in Aus and same in the UK. Its looking bad everywhere. Its not individual politics.
@@desons9481so they now run ever single tech company now, or are you just parroting like a good like gooses steeper what your talk show tells you to?
They changed the definition of recession year or two ago. By the past definition, yes, we are in a recession
BRO. We've lost 1.8 million jobs this year. Where you at?
What he said wasn’t wrong. He’s saying he thinks we are in a recession (which I’m thinking it’s closer to a depression), but the powers that be are saying it’s not true.
He isn’t in the same income
Bracket as any of us. He’s disconnected
@@MatthewHerman-xx8bwI don't think it has literally anything to do with his income. he could absolutely have just not known. I didn't either and it never crossed my mind until he brought it up
I live under a rock, and I have a simple part time job, and after seeing all these comments I'm curious.
Are we actually in a recession or possibly a depression? I have no clue at all about what's been going on the past year
@@Qouth on average, over the last 4 years, the cost of everything has gone up around 25% or more. It's abysmal.
The level of indifference and lack of empathy shown by some chatters and commenters here is mind boggling! And they’re mostly adults. Sheesh.
And trying to normalize this with comparison to other industries as if it’s that’s an acceptable trend and not dehumanized ways of running businesses (when there are better options while still being profitable and competitive)!
I’ve had to lay people off in my line of work in tech. It’s easy to just look at stats & numbers and ignore the human toll it has on every individual and its ripple effects. People’s spirit is broken after believing that meritocracy and hard work would have guaranteed them success.
Only someone who hasn’t been part of such firings or entered a field that already normalized it (marketing & service is notorious) would ever feel okay with this.
Meritocracy is propaganda, and the concept of merit is entirely worthless other than for making people follow directions out of faith. It is literally just a replacement for the functions that faith used to fulfill. Better for people to finally stop believing propaganda.
Imagine a world where almost every aspect of life is too expensive to afford, but when a question about the problem arises it’s swiftly met with, “EVERYTHING’S FINE! Look at this totally normal and unbiased graph that says it’s all good”.
And then a mass amount of people see that and say, “oh yeah, guess your right,” and continue to wallow in their hardships as they vote for the same people who put them there.
Imagine…
Statistics show that wages are going up faster than inflation. But when you actually use those numbers properly and take out the top earners it shows that wages aren't going up faster. The rich love to tell us that everything is fine and it's our fault if we can't afford things while they make more money than is feasible to spend
Not being in a recession doesn't mean everything's fine. The economy sucks for poor people and folks are getting poorer. But prices in consumer markets could twice as high and you could still not be in a recession. Understand that the overall economy is not tied to working-class money.
@@Gabdubelet’s be honest most gammers would flunk a high school economics class so baldy new numbers would need to be invented to give them their final grade.
I don't like the commentary that gamers and developers oppose each other, that gamers shouldn't care what happens to developers. Developers literally make the games we play.
Executives and shareholders exploit the developers to get as much game out of them as possible while paying as little as they can get away with - for every senior engineer making $250,000, there's 3 junior engineers and 10 QA testers making just above minimum wage.
Those same executives and shareholders exploit gamers by demanding that devs implement microtransactions and battlepasses - those things aren't gameplay, they're toll bridges to get to fun that's been offshored from the rest of the game. No game designer would spontaneously invent paid cosmetic horse armor as part of a fun play experience.
Devs and gamers are being exploited by the same people, and should be on the same side.
The people in chat saying this is normal or you shouldn't care are insane.
Evil systems create evil people.
I work at JPL for NASA and they let go around 1500 people already and more to come it's crazy.
what is jpl?
@@siyeon1276 Jet Propulsion Laboratory
@@TheHoot7that’s dope asf
We're not in a recession, it's just corporate greed
Its almost like doubling, and in some cases more than doubling, your workforce for expectations of exponential growth based on extreme circumstances that no reasonable person would expect to last forever was a bad idea. Then to top it all off, that extra staff hasn't produced any additional content or improved the wuality of existing content.
Execs don't see layoffs as a bad thing. Their job is to secure investments and ensure shareholder satisfaction. They're not in the business of providing employment, nor making actually-good products. Bloating their workforce temporarily to give investors the impression of growth, knowing they'll fire people later, was totally the right thing to do in their eyes. Those hires were not about producing anything through actual work. This is why you need syndicalism.
People acting like Cross is the devil for asking if they're in a recession, would you just rather he not ask? Some people just aren't as clued in to grand scale economics, some people just stick to their bubbles and take life as it comes because constantly reading into this shit is depressing as fuck.
Well a basic part of knowing if your in a recession is to compare a lot of factors from a period of 18 months(they many have changed it to 12) and see if their has been less then desired growth. Unlike a boom or a depression you don’t know if your in a recession till your well in or past one.
Developers are so bloated and so many "AAA" games come out only to fail. It isn't surprising.
How about a policy that forces corporate america to lay off a number of senior executives in a commensurate rate per the layoff. So if you layoff 10% of your workforce, you need to layoff 10% of your executive staff.
"Are we in a recession?" UH YES! We have been for the last 3.5 years, WORLD WIDE. The 2020 pandemic debacle hurt a LOT of countries. Man, must be nice to be so rich as to not notice...
since biden and kamala showed up
@@desons9481weird correlation but okay
Oh ya. Love a ‘recession’ where the s&p 500 has gone up 70% over your timeline
@@desons9481 Biden and Kamala do not govern the entire planet though. There exists other countries than the USA, FYI.
The inverted yield curve would scream yes, we've been in one since 2022, possibly earlier. Most if not all mainstream media or sources that are politically backed would fight tooth and nail to get you to believe otherwise. That said, everyone's personal economy is different.
This is why anti-trust policy is so important. Often times these acquisitions and mergers negatively effect employees because it stifles competition and ends in layoffs.
Yep. Also why you should support worker's unions.
Atztecross, what did you think was going to happen after 4 years of covid and massive hiring of developers? That time has ended and what's happening is the consequences of the whole world going back to work. Everyone should have seen this coming. These layoffs are expected.
saying "there's no reason to care about this unless your a developer" is plain wrong, if you want development team to make better and better games, be more efficient, be faster, you want them to continue working with each, not just because of moral in the studio, but because the more they work together the more proficient they become at doing so, not to mention other stuff like happiness and creativity driving
Crazy how some people can be so oblivious.
It's also just a plain evil thing to say. like jfc have some empathy.
@@sodasback1173 Propaganda is effective. You tell people that union jobs actually do better work, and they don't believe you, then turn around and wonder why hires are treated as disposable means to secure investment and why corpo business models shifted from making actually-good products to making money from initial investments and letting product failures be write-offs. Corpos are incentivized to run investment scams instead of actual work.
@@Lorentz_Driver Evil systems create evil people.
"Gaming will be dead by 2030" is a wild statement
Its the WEF time frame 2030.
You will own nothing and be happy!
All the big wigs and "in it to win it" politicians and celebrities go to their conferences. A lot is pointing there.
It's almost like we are under a similar administration when these recessions hit but yet....people still vote the same way....
It’s a double edged sword, because WHEN you rely on the East for games they pick up on bad American culture. Capcom and Square Enix both have a US division in California, made for more “inclusion” in video games, so even Eastern devs ruin games, so there’s a bad with the good. Gaming just needs to…focus on gaming and cut out the politics and greed. So many eyes are on Nintendo now because they focus on the games. Once that new Switch is revealed, the narrative will be set in stone
It's insane that top executives have their jobs while the games they were supposed to be in charge of failed to launch or turned out horrible while regular devs get the boot.
Execs are not in the business of providing stable employment, nor making good product; their job is to secure investment and satisfy shareholders, nothing else. This is why you should have unions, folks.
On the bright side, it’s not more Bungie news. On the other hand, fuck corporate greed.
I'll tell you this about 07-08. I had to have a family connection to get me into a job as a seasonal farm worker shoveling dirt for 10hrs a day at 8 dollars an hour. When season was over I couldn't even move into the packaging facility because they had tenured employees from outside that moved in. Instead I rode a bike 3 miles to a work office at 5am hoping some contractor would yell at me to jump in the bed of a pickup so I could shovel more dirt for 7.50 an hour. Those were the only jobs I could get.
Worse than 08, guy.
Nobody really addressed the 08 recession the way that it should have been, we just bailed out and carried on. And that would have been "fine" if things had actually carried on. But Covid blitzed in and forced the same sudden economic contraction, and all the progress that we made between 08 and '22ish went right out the window.
We're headed for a crash.
I could go on at length about how we got here and what could be done about it, but this isn't the place.
I'm not surprised by all these layoffs and will say that this isn't over. Game devs and publishers were making mad bank during the pandemic, and now that it's over, they're bleeding cash, so this was an eventuality
Yep. Corpos are in the business of making money, not providing employment. Those people only got hired insofar as it attracted investment and subsidies by showing a veneer of growth. It was only about making a quick buck. Sadly, employees buy into the propaganda that if they work hard enough they'll be rewarded, even though profits aren't about work, at all.
As a developer who was laid off last summer, I think executive and middle management salaries are out of control and timeliness have been so compressed, that it really is astounding to me. I think they are backwards on infrastructure and organizational structure as well. CEOs and middle managers don't need to be paid so much. They aren't the ones playing the games.
From a normal citizen point of view it definitely looks like we are in a recession, from a government point of view its the status norm.
People getting poorer doesn't mean the economy as a whole is in recession. People still believe that western economies are based on labor, even though they are not. We could fire 1/3rd of all workers and could still have "line go up". Workers getting poorer is not indicative of a recession; the economy just isn't about people at all.
In 08 it was a Job and Homes thing, today it is everything including food, Homes, Insurance, etc. is escalating in price exponentially, that did not happen in 08...
We're not in a recession, we're in a full DEPRESSION
We're defo approaching that door
Not yet, but we are going for something much worse
@@kddatrapmane worse then depression? Just a very harsh depression
@@zunny9040potential collapse
When I had the opportunity to visit Bungie in Bellevue last year I was surprised how many gaming studios are in a very small radius. Names like Bungie, Nintendo, Valve, and Microsoft are some just off the top of my head. Its crazy how they are all getting hit at the same time, even my friend who I met out there who worked on the Pokemon TCG was laid off, my heart goes out to everyone affected with these layoffs
Ubisoft is next.
If AC Shadow tanks then yes. it's bound to happen unfortunately
@@talentrippin3535 that game looks mid at best. If Outlaws is anything to go by, it’s not looking too good
@@AreYouTriggered24 not even just outlaws, I think mirage and even more so, skull and bones, are even better examples of the how badly ubisoft is spiraling
You gotta love the mindset if it's everybody's fault.Except for the people who made the bad investment.
"Are we in a recession."
Brother we are in the worst economical crisis the world has ever seen. The only sector that was experiencing growth these last few years was the tech sector and that bubbles bursting. The US dollar is losing value and we are $35 trillion in debt. The amount of money the US government is taking from taxes and other means isn't even covering the interest of that debt anymore. Governmental spending is at record highs, mega corps experienced record high profits right after covid and are now burning out employees left and right as the economy started slowing down.
yet these fucking big wig ceo’s still gotta be paid millions for whoever knows why
The worst economical crisis the world has ever seen? What?
@@bigtimecarlos26yea I was confused at that statement. We still have a ways to go before it gets there
People have been saying the tech bubble is bursting since the early 2000s. Those people tend to be poor AF
I love that people in here are discussing things from a more adult perspective, I wish they had the same energy for the bungie layoffs
This is why i work in a field that is always in demand
same
Yuuuup
Same
Which field would that be?
@@4am446also wanting to know
Based on the economist data, apparently their are more jobs available and growing and demonstrates their are we are not in a recession at all.
Something about that data isn't correct if the prices of products and services keeps going up and the people keep losing their jobs from all sectors of work.
Even looking for jobs, some companies create job positions that don't get fulfilled, are reposted, or left untouched for a certain amount of weeks or even months. Apparently it's called ghost job postings. The ghost jobs posting is important because companies indicate they are "always hiring" but many apply and the job continues to be open but never fulfilled which leads to being a job that is forever open. Making it a ghost job posted. The reason I bring this up is because economists say the job market is booming but how can you say it is if these job postings exist but never get fulfilled?
The economy as a whole is just not tied to working-class money at all. Line goes up even if most people are getting poorer.
We’re actually in a greater depression than the Great Depression. Buying power was higher back then
The 08 crash was a crime against humanity. Tons of seniors lost their homes AND retirement savings…. The fincial world is the dirtiest game on earth
The US isn't in a recession, but that doesn't mean that the economy is healthy. The average American has steadily been losing buying power since the 70s as more and more wealth gets consolidated at the top. Productivity is at all-time highs, yet wages haven't kept pace for decades.
One the China front: There were about 10k layoffs in the gaming sector last year in China. There's a trend towards market consolidation and monopolization from the larger studios, much like we have seen in the NA market. Also, the CCP did attempt to crackdown on gaming, particularly amongst young people. It hurt the industry to the tune of $80 billion, so they've been walking those policies back.
It’s not just Bungie that’s hurting…. This economy is reeling
Honestly the reason the west is having so much trouble with films and games lately is because those companies have been pandering and bringing ideologies to a very selective crowd that is very small instead of the whole community… That is the truth.
If companies instead made games that are great and fun that cater to the whole gaming/fanbase communities then I really believe that everything would have gone and be better.
We have had films and tv shows that ignore source material/lore/community sentiment and instead follow their own ideologies or who the material is being made for and just end up destroying lore and any future interest from the whole main community.
Gaming companies have been on a downhill since the rise of live service games and the crazy increase on monetizing every piece of a game, add the increased pandering to a certain community and even allowing certain people with specific ideologies make important creative decisions that again change the direction of the game and who it’s made for. Instead of making fun games being competitive or not but fun and for the whole gaming community we instead have gotten let downs that again destroy morale for future games and at times don’t even get a crumb of of the gaming community pie because of their decisions.
We need companies films/shows/games to again make material for who it’s made for, for who the fans are.. messages can be made and the best messages in the past have not been on the forefront but creatively placed to make sense and create sentiment, a message should be created that everyone can understand and enjoy but it should never be made to be the only reason material is made otherwise it leads failure.
That is the reason, not that hard to see and it shouldn’t be hard to acknowledge
Exactly. Well said.
This is not surprising with the acquisition, I'm surprised it wasn't done sooner. I been through a acquisitions before and support roles like HR, Finance, Marketing, IT and here probably QA, any roles that criss cross with the parent company are usually the first to go within 6 months after handover.
Recession? No bro we are in a great depression it just hasn't hit you yet!
@@krazieyez2429 It never will either cross prolly makes over 150k a year on average since he's triple dipping in the most lucrative sources of income for content creation and I honestly I wouldn't be surprised if he's even up to 200k.
AAA game development has gotten significantly more expensive to the point where they have to expect their new game to be the next “big thing” whereas smaller passion driven studios who can create games of similar quality have a much higher profit margin from a game blowing up.
The concequences of building a society around the ideology that perpetual exponential growth is physically possible. It's a scam.
Xbox is losing its complete identity. What is Xbox? Is it a console? A brand on multiple consoles? I doubt that's what consumers have in mind when they think of Xbox. It's watering itself down year after year until it becomes something we can't identify nor care for. Such a bizarre series of events
If we're honest the gaming development industry is massively bloated in terms of staff. Especially where DEI & consultancy is concerned adding onto staff. Look at the Batman Arkham games and their writers. First game had 2-3 writers where suicide squad had almost 20 with a good chunk being from Sweet Baby inc. That kind of additional staffing comes at significant cost to the AAA industry trying to make games.
At the same time the ability for indie developers and small studio's to make amazing games from Stardew Valley, Wukong, Pal World and others are directly eating into the AAA industries profits. You then look at Microsoft, Ubisoft, Sony making massive financal mistakes investing absurd amounts of money into projects like Concord that are doomed to fail. You're right that developers are switching to mobile because it's a numbers game in terms of customers.
"Are we in a recession?" My brother in the light, we have been in a massive decline since 2020, where have you been?
"aRe wE iN rEceSsion?" Bruh, you are going to get a lot of jokes thrown at you for that video for years 🤣
we have been in a recession. its been like this for the past 3 years. need better leadership.
Leadership doesn't care about making good games or keeping people's jobs. They only care about making higher profits
@@anthonywaschow9409 not talking about gaming. But don’t want to get it political lol
@@djguzzy10 If we've been in a recession for the last 3 years, wouldn't both administrations have played a part in it?
Asian companies with no DEI and ESG score are gaining millions meanwhile western developer embracing it are failing
as a political science bachelor degree holder, and someone who watches economics and politics pretty closely:
yes, we could be in a recession. job market is cooling, but not cold. this also looks bad for the tech sector specifically because of the boom of hiring in 2020. they can’t afford to pay for them anymore. borrowing money was super cheap just a few years ago and now it’s expensive.
There is a recession but thr mentality of the people is just ignore reality.
Looses in employment doesn't mean the economy as a whole is in recession. People still believe the propaganda that our western economies are based on employed labor; they're not. We could fire 1/3rd of all workers and could still have "line go up". The economy as a whole is just not tied to working-class money at all.
2:22 It's good to see people waking up!
Sooo, what was the point of Microsoft buying all these game studio companies? They should be sued into the dirt for anti-trust, but, I'm no lawyer.
i’m so sick of this nonsense.
Recession. Nothing new.
Probably will only hear of more of these happening sadly.
Why? Was your life impacted?
Its been happening since the dawn of time
Sick of what nonsense? A weak economy? Advancements in technology reducing the need for labour? You want companies to hire more people because more people=better product?
Wu Kong was cheaper to make because designers and engineers are paid way less in China
Our economy is in the gutter
So don't vote communism 😂
@@fyrfly8768 preaching to the choir lol
I'll just put this here for others to see. The Federal Reserve is not federal. It was a private institution that was made in Jekyll Island.
If you’re asking if we’re in a recession then you’re rich af.
It might be an issue after three years. I just lost my job last week They came in, sat me down and told me hey it’s not you bro not your job not your performance Here. we gotta make some cuts. in your position is being cut out you’ll be re-hireable but at this moment, we were no longer need your services and when we get everything back up and running again, if you’re still looking for employment, you can always reapply here. Saddest shit I heard bkuz I put in a lot of work hard at that for nothing to be thrown away. It sucks. But this isn’t nothing like the last recession I was in I’ve been working since 1999. 2008-2010 was hard on me jobs were hiring and firing left and right.
We aren't in a recession, but we're cooling down after the gaming boom during covid. And looking at the broader job market, openings are at a 3 year low. Companies and employees are holding out, being an election year has a lot to do with that. The "line must go up" mentality continues to take it's toll across all sectors, but especially the gaming industry.
The reason game development is so expensive in America is because we pay the CEO’s of the companies WAY too much money. Bobby Kotick took a pay package of $155 million (let that sink in) while the CEO of Nintendo takes home about $2.5 million a year, and at one point took a 50% pay cut to prevent layoffs at Nintendo. So I’m no financial expert but I may have isolated the problem… 🤦
Dude this shit is what happens in this industry, I mean I can go back in the 90s 2000s 2010s and find so many articles of these huge corps letting people go in droves, it happens when they make big acquisitions... Jfc it's so tiresome seeing vids on things that are commonplace in this business. Like little kids that don't understand or know what the grown up world is like
Couldn't have said better myself
Word; I was in the advertising industry for over a decade before I got sick of seeing 2 years at a single agency as a long stint. Some industries just are this way; tech and entertainment just seem to be heading in that direction as the people at the top treat the companies and clients like baseball cards. Oh wait it's 2024; like pokemon cards? Wait it's not 2010 ... like ... vape cannisters? What do people trade these days I'm old
@@hasercorp8140 yea I mean these younger generations, it's as if they only know what the last 5 years is... They have no idea about life in their little bubbles. I rememeber monster and I mean monster layoffs in decades past, it just the nature of that industry. These tubers are so... Coddled, they simply come across with zero life experiences
This is what happens when an industry is allowed to buy up competition left and right. You wind up with redundant shared services across dozens of studios all under a single umbrella. It's natural for these companies to lay off HR, Legal, support, etc. across their subsidiaries and consolidate into a single tower for those shared services.
If we want this to stop, we have to stop allowing studios to buy each other up left and right.
Video Game companies function much better when there is no DEI team. Cut that shit out of the companies and now you're making good games again.
that…. has nothing to do with what’s going on right now lol
@@youngslorp cope
bruh, we've BEEN in a recession... just because people aren't feeling it ALL over doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It's a recession.
Lol, who gives a shit. 😂
No, we’re not in a recession and neither are we hitting any of the markers that predict recessions. we do know that starting in 2021 there were massive hiring spree by tech companies, partially for growth and also partially to make sure those employees didn’t go to competitors. There was an insane bubble across the sector starting in 2021.
I know there’s a lot of dumb fucks out there that don’t know anything pretending that their genius is on the economy . But we know companies were hiring people to do their work because they thought doing zero work for them was better than those employees doing work for their competitors. It was absolutely bullshit. Insane what was going on from that 2021 hiring bubble
Western economies? Most of Europe functions as some form of socialism govt. You're comparing apples to oranges. Also, you mention the economy doing well. This economy is Not doing well. Inflation is ridiculously high which is tied directly to govt overspending. So when this govt cuts a check to another country it is contributing directly to the problem. And what the US a powerhouse was that it was self reliant. It wasn't until globalist policies came into play that put this country at risk. NAFTA for example was one of the worst things that could've happened. Followed by the exodus of companies to other countries where regulations/taxes weren't as harmful.
Just remember that Godzilla Minus One cost $15, 000,000ish and was better than anything that came out from Hollywood in the last several years.
Starfield doing good is a myth. The game cost with marketing around $200 mln and generated overall revenue of $100 mln. and now, more people are playing Oblivion or Fallout 3 than Starfield.
I'm an old man. I've lived through recessions. This is not a recession. This is about game studios swelling beyond their means during the pandemic. People are not spending money on games like they did during that time because they're working, going to school and living life outside of their homes.
Can't wait for a thrilling tweet from Spencer going "If only the customers paid $100+ on expansions, or we wouldn't have had to cut so many salaries."
It's important to note that the memo or email said mostly corporate and support roles. The actual devs would not be considered corporate or support. Finance and administrative folks would be considered corporate and lower level IT specialists and software engineers would be support (bug fixes). The people who are considered the game developers are the ones working on updates, new dlcs, and new games. Those jobs were likely unaffected for the most part. Most companies consolidate finance and admin positions when acquiring a company, but keep the workforce developing the products (depending on the product).
It’s the same thing happening with Bungie. All of these companies overhired and overspent when gaming business exploded during Covid. Now that profits are down and gaming isn’t making nearly as much, companies are cutting costs and essentially just returning to normal. It’s nonsensical to believe that companies should be able to just make it work when they’re operating at double capacity in comparison to pre-Covid. Does it suck? Yes. Does it make sense? Also yes.
Part of the problem is also the fact that the entertainment industry had a massive boom through covid. Shareholders expect the same profits, studios aren't getting that because a majority of the population doesn't have infinite free time anymore so they have to scale back to where they were at in like 2018 and try to keep the shareholders happy with now a smaller workforce and more profit.
Totally unsustainable.
This channel is probably the only one I watch when it comes to gaming news so this is EXTREMELY helpful to keep in the loop of what's going on
We are not in a recession. The gaming industry, like all industries, expects continuous growth, and for some reason also expected the pandemic boost to the industry to continue. Now that numbers are more in line with pre-pandemic numbers, the industry is cutting back HARD as an over correction, not out of fear of insolvency but rather to keep profits rising in the short term.
Tech jobs are on a decline for years. Some manufacturing in general are struggling. I got laid off due to lack of work a couple weeks ago. These are electrical devices. Business was booming during Covid and then last year we had over a year and a half of worth of inventory just sitting there. Well, my job needs new production to stay busy. Weeks on end I sat and did nothing. So I wasn’t surprised I lost my job. But I start a new job that pays a larger salary and doing the same job.
Mother of God people need to relax. Cross is just talking to his chat
We are in the greatest depression in us history. Worse then even the Great Depression of the 1930s. This is just a silent depression.
We had two years 2 1/2 years of Covid where nobody was able to work companies didn’t put out anything. There were no new games. There was barely any development going on and now you wonder why all these companies are having a late people off you think it’s some kind of anomaly it was to be expected.
Something has to change with gaming companies and gaming developers. Without companies, money to get games off the ground is much more difficult, while without developers a game doesn't get made. Developers can not be treated as disposable assets as they need reasonable levels of job security.
its called company greed not recession.