‘I’ve Never Seen It This Bad:’ Game Developers Explain the Huge Layoffs Hitting Riot, Epic, and More
‘I’ve Never Seen It This Bad:’ Game Developers Explain the Huge Layoffs Hitting Riot, Epic, and More
21 Comments
welcome to late stage capitalism boys
Oof when that AI really starts rolling I can’t imagine how many people become jobless.
I do hope it’s just because AAA studios got their asses handed to them by consumers and smaller devs all 2023 and it’s just a market correction that will give us more good games with more carefully constructed dev teams, but I doubt it. Probably just trying to make those margins look a bit better going forwards.
Covid gave the whole industry a 2 year boost and those numbers just weren’t sustainable.
Boy these AI-made games are going to be great…
Glad I have a giant backlog of games enough so that I probably never have to buy another new game again. And by the look of things, I largely won’t want to.
Release the RIOT MMO already and they might have something to do!
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Maybe they should go back to focusing on what gaming is all about, and that is gameplay. Stop with all the fancy ray-tracing and texture shadows. That stuff is just swallowing the budget. People want games they can play and enjoy. Hell, bring back couch co-op, make it enjoyable again. Now I’m not saying today’s games aren’t great, I just think the focus needs to be on the actual gameplay as really, that’s what we buy them for.
What’s the opposite of “learn to code”
AI can code better than you. …. learn to manual labor?
Yeah, times are tough. But hey, plenty of time now to slay that game pile of shame, right?
‘I’ve Never Seen It This Bad’ says employee who probably was either in grade school, or not even alive the 4 other times its been THIS BAD or even worse in the game industry.
Like this isnt even scratching at the layoffs around the 1983 gaming crash. We are talking a segment that went from over 3 billion in profits in 1982 to barely pulling 100 million the following year. Whole companies were laid off and it basically killed Atari, Commodore, and others and lead to the downfall of the video arcade as a whole, with nearly 2000 of them closing in 83 alone, never to recover from that despite many 80’s kids fond memory of arcades.
Not to mention the contraction after the .com era… which cause the death of many of the companies that were born out of the post 80’s crash and lead to the rise of powerhouses like EA, Activision, and other mega-game corps and they started gobbling up the smaller firms like Microprose, Black Isle, etc.
The thing is, this is the game industry since day 1. It has ALWAYS had this widely unsustainable rhythm which results in devs getting absolutely destroyed after a couple years. We have been hearing for decades now the bullshit of game companies overworking their devs for sometimes months, then laying them off RIGHT after release. The boon/bust cycle is nothing new, so why do we keep acting like this is, and instead use this as a wakeup call it is to actually rise up and start calling for change?
So many comments about AI. The article has nothing to do with AI.
Fortnite
Look at the current economy 🤷🏻♂️
I keep seeing people on here talk about AI generated assets. It won’t be long before that evolves into AI generated GAMES. Like.. the whole thing.. characters, level design, music, etc. Just ask it for a whole game with this genre and overall theme, and BOOM. New game.
That’s what you all get for voting Biden.
There was a boom during covid, that boom is over so don’t need all those extra hires anymore maybe?
I worked in HR in gaming for about 8 years. I’m in non-gaming tech now. Its a bloodbath, yeah this is the first big recession I’ve seen, but this is real bad. Lots of devs and non-dev talent are getting let go. I wish the best to everyone affected.
because your games are stale and unfun money grabs.
Have a friend in art department get laid off, shit sucks
It’s just a correction of pandemic overhiring