If you’ve been keeping tabs on the gaming industry, then you’ve probably noticed an uptick in job loss. While some of these industry-shaking losses have been more publicized than others, that doesn’t change the fact that an estimated 9,000 jobs have been lost.
VGC reports as of December 10, the number of job losses in the industry skyrocketed with many big developers slashing positions left and right. Unity holds the unfortunate top spot, slashing over 1,000 people alone, meanwhile, other studios like CD Projekt Red, Xbox Game Studios, Electronic Arts, Take-Two Interactive, Telltale Games, BioWare, Striking Distance, and a slew of others have all cut jobs across this year. Obviously, the most recent victim to Embracer Group’s industry-shaking cost-cutting measures was that of Free Radical Design, which was the last bastion of hope for a TimeSplitters remake.
Kantan Games CEO Serkan Toto spoke with GamesIndustry.biz about the ongoing layoffs, likening it to the growing need to be more efficient and in just the last 18 months, that task has become even more important, leading to game developers having to get rid of the fat, even if they were somewhat important to the project.
Recruitment specialist Liz Prince sees it in another light, considering this looks like “post-Covid realignment.” Many of these developers went on a mass hiring spree during lockdown and are now paying the hefty price of scaling up too fast and being left with a lot of employees that it no longer needs.
