Endless Layoffs And Studios Closing
Last year, layoffs were a problem in the game industry. And this year, they became an even bigger problem. I can’t think of a year in which I saw more developers laid off than 2023. It’s been practically a weekly occurrence during most of the last 12 months. It got so bad that I started losing track of all of the layoffs that had happened. It became a sad blur of people losing their jobs across dozens of studios and publishers.
Over 6,000 developers have been laid off since January 2023. That’s a big number that is hard to fully grok. We also saw studios shutting down, including Volition and Free Radical Design. So finding new work in this tumultuous industry just gets harder and harder as more and more people lose their jobs.
I want to say things will get better. But I expect that in 2024 I’ll be writing this list and adding a section about layoffs, again. Again.
