The fact thousands of people who were hardcore gaming during the pandemic have gone back to their old lives…
agha0013
media really doesn’t need to write individual stories for every subcategory in the tech industries. They are all doing it and all for the same short term gain reasons.
Whynotbutnot
Because shareholders are not happy if its not up EVERY quarters.
bs200000
Probably because in the past year various companies experimented with using A.I. to complete “grunt work” in development, it worked out okay, and now they are shedding unnecessary workforce.
The8thHammer
buybacks go brrr
KooraiberTheSequel
Because shareholders don’t want to lose 0.5% of their wealth.
CottonBuds81
Part of it will be about shareholders & making the books look GREAT.
Another part is because infinite growth isn’t feasible & companies are finding they need to have an appropriate amount of staff in order to do business. Some of the cuts are optimal while ofc there are some due to scummy practices of having less staff do the same amount of work as when they had more staff.
Also while it sucks to get laid off, in the games industry that does breed a lot of potential for new studios & even current studios looking to expand their teams to pick up some free agents so to speak.
Caelxn
Unsustainable growth targets for investors leading to reductions in labour costs, less income for a lot of AAA game studios due to heavy/predatory monetisation in their games and gamers saying no, game devs getting sick of underpaid/overworked positions, etc.
Unlucky_Ad3456
Because they over hired during COVID due to record profits of people buying video games when stuck at home. Now that people are going back to work, those profits are down and this cuts need to be made
Example: Microsoft during COVID hired 50,000 people. After COVID, Microsoft laid off 10,000.
Overall, the company still expanded by 40,000 jobs.
Pretty much the same across the industry.
Bardakikel
MoAr MoNey
PassionVater
Because all these people got hired during the pandemic. Now with things having cooled down, they are not needed anymore.
tempuseridc
Because it is not a $180bn industry anymore.
TheStoictheVast
Covid bubble has burst. The live service fatigue is the highest it has ever been, and these companies still haven’t got the message. It would be surprising if there *wasnt* layoffs.
tossashit
Because the planet is being consumed by greed and ‘I got mine’ type mentality. It’s not enough to just *be* profitable and make good products that sell. Every penny has to be saved, cut or extracted and given to CEOs and shareholders who don’t know when enough is enough.
ExcitableNate
Those executive stock portfolios aren’t going to pad themselves.
shinyRedButton
I did freelance work for a company (not gaming industry) that made over a billion dollars in profit and it was considered a failure because it wasn’t growth from the previous year. The board voted to sell and liquidate the company. Welcome to the insane world we live in now.
thisisredlitre
Acquisitions create loss
trantaran
Because games are not super profitable for a lot of companies
GipsyRonin
Bigger bottom line. Capitalism is the best bad idea we have as a species and like 99% of AAA devs answer to a larger publisher. Those publishers demand only growth today and let’s also be real, there are many useless jobs at many companies.
For example, if you had to lay off staff to cut costs at a game dev company and say it had a DEI team and Chief Diversity Officer making big money…you laying off that? Or the teams that physically make the games that bring in the money. I think Twitter highlighted this by gutting staff in useless areas (the TikTok girl posting her day in the life of Twitter where she did like 30 minutes at most of actual work that in no way touched the company) and the companies core function still moves forward just find.
HelloItsMeXeno
So it can be a $181bn industry
teketria
Layoffs often happen before review periods to inflate numbers. “Look we achieved this much with only X amount of staff!” Versus X+1200 staff (as a random number for example). It heavily hurts them in the ling run when people don’t want to work for them anymore if they repeat the practice. However what makes this really unforgivable is it mostly is to line the pockets of higher ups who get bonuses for company performance so a literal few rich people fuck over hundreds to thousands of employees for the sake of lining their pockets.
22 Comments
Greed
The fact thousands of people who were hardcore gaming during the pandemic have gone back to their old lives…
media really doesn’t need to write individual stories for every subcategory in the tech industries. They are all doing it and all for the same short term gain reasons.
Because shareholders are not happy if its not up EVERY quarters.
Probably because in the past year various companies experimented with using A.I. to complete “grunt work” in development, it worked out okay, and now they are shedding unnecessary workforce.
buybacks go brrr
Because shareholders don’t want to lose 0.5% of their wealth.
Part of it will be about shareholders & making the books look GREAT.
Another part is because infinite growth isn’t feasible & companies are finding they need to have an appropriate amount of staff in order to do business. Some of the cuts are optimal while ofc there are some due to scummy practices of having less staff do the same amount of work as when they had more staff.
Also while it sucks to get laid off, in the games industry that does breed a lot of potential for new studios & even current studios looking to expand their teams to pick up some free agents so to speak.
Unsustainable growth targets for investors leading to reductions in labour costs, less income for a lot of AAA game studios due to heavy/predatory monetisation in their games and gamers saying no, game devs getting sick of underpaid/overworked positions, etc.
Because they over hired during COVID due to record profits of people buying video games when stuck at home. Now that people are going back to work, those profits are down and this cuts need to be made
Example: Microsoft during COVID hired 50,000 people. After COVID, Microsoft laid off 10,000.
Overall, the company still expanded by 40,000 jobs.
Pretty much the same across the industry.
MoAr MoNey
Because all these people got hired during the pandemic. Now with things having cooled down, they are not needed anymore.
Because it is not a $180bn industry anymore.
Covid bubble has burst. The live service fatigue is the highest it has ever been, and these companies still haven’t got the message. It would be surprising if there *wasnt* layoffs.
Because the planet is being consumed by greed and ‘I got mine’ type mentality. It’s not enough to just *be* profitable and make good products that sell. Every penny has to be saved, cut or extracted and given to CEOs and shareholders who don’t know when enough is enough.
Those executive stock portfolios aren’t going to pad themselves.
I did freelance work for a company (not gaming industry) that made over a billion dollars in profit and it was considered a failure because it wasn’t growth from the previous year. The board voted to sell and liquidate the company. Welcome to the insane world we live in now.
Acquisitions create loss
Because games are not super profitable for a lot of companies
Bigger bottom line. Capitalism is the best bad idea we have as a species and like 99% of AAA devs answer to a larger publisher. Those publishers demand only growth today and let’s also be real, there are many useless jobs at many companies.
For example, if you had to lay off staff to cut costs at a game dev company and say it had a DEI team and Chief Diversity Officer making big money…you laying off that? Or the teams that physically make the games that bring in the money. I think Twitter highlighted this by gutting staff in useless areas (the TikTok girl posting her day in the life of Twitter where she did like 30 minutes at most of actual work that in no way touched the company) and the companies core function still moves forward just find.
So it can be a $181bn industry
Layoffs often happen before review periods to inflate numbers. “Look we achieved this much with only X amount of staff!” Versus X+1200 staff (as a random number for example). It heavily hurts them in the ling run when people don’t want to work for them anymore if they repeat the practice. However what makes this really unforgivable is it mostly is to line the pockets of higher ups who get bonuses for company performance so a literal few rich people fuck over hundreds to thousands of employees for the sake of lining their pockets.