I wonder how close to pre-2020 numbers the industry is currently at. I know several companies increased their employee count due to big game sales during COVID, but once people could leave their houses again sales leveled off and then the layoffs started happening.
bitter sweet. hoping that those who were laid off continue developing some great indie games. that’s where the market is headed anyways
That’s fucking brutal
Is it dot com bubble levels of lay offs? I just want to have some kind of reference point, not being rude.
Based on cursory search: not yet, but 2023-present have been highest layoff levels since 2001. Again, I know nothing.
Then it is really bad. I hope they find other jobs.
It’s messy, there are a lot of people laid off, but also there are a lot of companies snatching up talent. I know some games people that have been laid off three times in the past 2 years :/
Good that some companies can invest in talent. It must be tough to lose a job, get a new job and then lose that one as well within two years and I can’t imagine how it would feel like to lose my job three times in two years.
unfortunately the game industry is full of that crap, that’s why unions are starting to pop up.
It’s basically contract gigs. Someone has a hit on their hands, so they have unlimited cash to get it out the door, someone else’s title does poorly in focus groups, they companies just shed their mid tier workers and they hop company to company
But Microsoft pinky promised that allowing them to breach anti-trust law would not result in layoffs.
Shouldn’t indy studios be springing up everywhere?
Investment money is not as plentiful as it was several years ago. I’ve heard it in several interviews with developers or devs themselves. (Game Maker’s Notebook, Mike and Rami are Still Here, and a few devs on YouTube come to mind.)
It also doesn’t take hundreds of people to make a good game anymore, just a dozen or so good employees (sometimes less). Big studios struggle with justifying their existence with graphics and scope creep. Then, more often then not, management shoves it full of microtransactions or refocuses the game to hit whatever’s hot this second. Which often leads to a polished turd of a game.
When you look at the big hits over the last 10 yeas, less than half of them came from big publishers and big studios. With less every year. It’s just not a model that works anymore.
I completely agree that huge teams aren’t needed. That said I think at least some of that is exactly because smaller studios full of expert talent were getting funded for several years, because those big studios weren’t making the games developers wanted to make. And those devs understood that “fun” wasn’t the same as “top of the line presentation”.
ARC Raiders’ Embark Studios has a lot of people from DICE. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s Sandfall Interactive has a lot of people from Ubisoft. Even Dispatch’s Ad Hoc is a lot of Telltale people (at least some of them by way of Ubisoft.) They knew a lot about their process, but their big companies weren’t making the games they were interested in. So they got funding elsewhere (and famously Ad Hpc’s funding dried up mid-development.)
I’m curious about Wikipedia’s sourcing here. Granted there’s the Balatros and Stardew Valleys of the world, and Helldivers did well. But do smaller games really make up half? Year after year the big ones are usually COD, two big sports game, a Nintendo game, another big fps, a big action game, and a few others.
Again I agree with you when it comes to good games. But man, those big ones are huge sellers. I just wish we had clear insight into sales. But that’s been a thing for a long time now.
I was included in this. Was laid off back in June 2025. One of the best places I ever worked.
The industry is super tough. I got very lucky & started a new job at the beginning of the month. Being out of work for 6 months sucked, and some people I mentor have been out much longer.
What would happen if the layed off created new studios together?
Being able to get in contact easily (with the laid off) would be rough, and creating a new studio with no passive income and only promises is a hard sell. But that’s honestly not a terrible idea. Get devs to coalesce into indie studios ready to make whatever passion game they’ve had rattling around.
Also crowdsourcing has worked many times when trusted names/teams are behind a project.
All the venture switched over to AI. Nobody wants to fund new studios. Games are brutal, only one in a massive pile ever become profitable. Gamedev is roughly full time work, but they still need to eat.
In the industry as well, future does look grim for the companies…
Not too surprised. What I’ve seen from friends and family in the industry is a mix of union busting and natural shrinking after the 2020 boom. AI is kinda frowned upon for those AAA companies (at least at middle management and below) so it wasn’t so much job replacement although that option might still galvanize union busting.
Granted the companies in question are Japanese and Korean developers, so the US side is mostly licensing and marking and such. And if I’m being honest, some of those marketers really should lose their jobs, or at least stop getting paid twice that of actual talented people… sigh.
Sounds like a massive opportunity to form a lot of new indie studios that isn’t happening. Or people aren’t announcing it.
it’s not happening because at the same time the willingness of investors to find new studios and games also drastically went down
Can we crowdsource one? I’d throw a few grand into a new studio with the right leadership and governance.
Short answer: yes.
Long answer: It’s like a 1:100 shot to make something even remotely profitable. You need to pay a team of people (with families sometimes) enough money to eat/pay rent/live long enough to release a game, which could be a year or two. Even with good management and a decent designer it’s a roll of the dice.
As someone who was recently laid off if anyone wants to front the cash I’m currently available for cheap.
I would front $10 if you can produce a fun “game jam winning” level of prototype. You just need a few thousand more like me.
Investors are not required to form an indie studio. They are not required to build a fun game that makes a lot of money. Indie studios do not require massive injections of cash. Most indie studios are formed on what is available to the team collectively. It isn’t something that is easy, it takes effort, but it is not impossible. Most indie studios are initially formed with like, less than $20k USD in total investment. Many are just one guy with a budget of $0.
It is more likely that the amount of money that an investor would realistically need to give is considered too small to be worth the PR, but too big to just give away in a whim. Enough that one or multiple studio members could easily take out a personal load to invest into the studio without needing a private investor.
Now, if those people are demanding multiple big six+ figure investments, then they aren’t trying to form an indie studio, they’re trying to form a AAA studio that is publisher independant. Which is an unreasonable ask.
Investors are not required to form an indie studio, in the case where every team member of that studio has some means to pay their own rent/mortgage, bills, and feed themselves for the entire duration of the project. If you’re in the US, you’ll also need to figure out how you’re paying for health insurance. This could be a passion project in addition to a day job, but coordinating work/life balance in that scenario with multiple team members is exponentially difficult.
Money adds up quick. Let’s use some round numbers and say you want to hire a team with some experience (those folks that just got laid off and are looking for work). Let’s say everybody on the team costs the project $100k/year in salary & benefits. Let’s just imagine that includes costs a normal employer would pay: insurance premiums, IT hosting costs, all the little stuff. Note, this is underpaying people with more than 5 years experience who live in California (where many game dev studios are based). Let’s say you can get the game made in one year with everybody starting on day one and ending on ship day, exactly 365 days later. People will be wearing multiple hats, but let’s be general.
- 1x Gameplay Programmer
- 1x 3D Artist (general modeler)
- 1x 2D Artist (general texture artist)
- 1x Game Designer (Camera/Controls/Combat)
- 1x Audio Designer
$500k
Expanding that team:
- 1x Animator
- 1x Character Artist
- 1x Environment Artist
- 1x Prop Artist
- 1x VFX Artist
- 1x Lighting Specialist
- 1x Tools Programmer
- 1x Render/Optimization Programmer
- 1x Level Designer
- 1x Narrative Designer
$1.5M
That’s a 15 person studio, where people are still wearing multiple hats like UI, Music, IT, Testing, other things I’m forgetting about. This isn’t anywhere close to a AAA sized team of 100+ people.
This is also assuming you can stick to a STRICT time schedule. In reality you’re probably going to need a very small team at the start and not grow until you finish prototyping, then again once you’ve done a vertical slice.
Anyway. This post got real long. The gist of it is the people making the game need that money to live. There should be space in the industry to make a game with a team this size, paying your employees something close to what the big studios pay them. Getting that kind of money has been incredibly difficult these past few years.
Can kick-starter work for funding? Weekend game jam, demo, kick-start, develop, repeat.
Check out Camelot Unchained.
it can happen, but it can go very very wrong.
Yes? Isn’t kick-starter made for this case? The problem is that the money from kick-starter is usually not enough, it is more to prove to other investors that people are interested so the other investors dare to go in with more money.
^^^ This is exactly how it works.
You ‘can’ bootstrap an indie with an Artist and a Dev, but they need to be the best ever at their job and be able to wear a ton of hats, work for nothing and somehow manage to never burn out. The vast majority of games that run that way never see the light of day.
One-third is the cut most game stores take.
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30% like the rest.
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Steam is the best thing to happen to gaming period.
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Steam is the best thing to happen to Gaben. It’s better than the other options as a product but the bar is really low and steam takes advantage just as much as the other players. The soft monopoly going on is clearly having an effect imo.
What are the examples of steam “taking advantage just as much as the other players?”
By not competing with them. Gaben has 1.5 billion dollars worth of yachts. Steam doesn’t need to be taking 30% and only does so because everyone else does. I guess big companies colluding, each with a billionaire at the helm, is kind of the law of the market tbh but it’s not “the best”.
So, what y’all doing now?
I was at a gaming studio that closed down in late 2024, most of the people I’ve talked to since have left games and work in general tech.
Man good thing they’re coming out with so many new games. I’d be worried about the long term health of these big companies if it weren’t for the solid pipes of great new titles rolling out
