James Lau’s Post

More layoffs? Yup, more layoffs. Today on GamesIndustry.biz... (Wednesday, February 28th, 2024) 1. Electronic Arts has just announced it is laying off around 5% of its workforce (approx. 670 people) as it focuses on the strongest parts of its business. According to CEO Andrew Wilson, the publisher is "moving away from development of future licensed IP that we do not believe will be successful in our changing industry" (but Black Panther and Iron Man are both still in development https://lnkd.in/gVmPMzeh 1b. Deck Nine Games, the studio behind Life is Strange: True Colors, has let go of around 30 employees (20% of its workforce) due to "worsening market conditions" https://lnkd.in/gXa4jWKT 1c. Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium has also reportedly been hit by layoffs https://lnkd.in/gvNTnKir 2. Nintendo continues its crusade against emulation with a lawsuit filed against Switch emulator Yuzu. The platform holder says Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was made available to Yuzu users a week and a half before launch, and was downloaded more than 1m times https://lnkd.in/gX-eQn5s 3. Remedy has bought back the full rights to Control from publisher 505 Games in a deal worth €17 million. This includes the rights to upcoming sequel and multiplayer co-op spin-off Condor https://lnkd.in/gW5Xm-iV 4. Call of Duty's David Vonderhaar is back, now heading up BulletFarm - the latest AAA Western studio from NetEase. He and his team are working on a new first-person IP with an emphasis on co-op. The studio is remote-first with an office in LA https://lnkd.in/gEsXnMUM 5. And Tekken series boss Katsuhiro Harada has weighed in on the debate around the introduction of microtransactions to Tekken 8, pointing to rising development costs. He said current dev costs are "more than double or nearly triple the cost of Tekken 7" and ten times higher than they were in the Nineties https://lnkd.in/gRSAgmUY You can find more news - as well as our latest 10 Years Ago This Month retrospective - at www.gamesindustry.biz. And make sure you're signed up to our GI Daily newsletter (https://lnkd.in/eAkx_zen) to get all this and more delivered straight to your inbox.

Tomorrow is Summer Games fest, but I want everyone watching that to remember how much hell the games industry has been through over the past 2 years. SO much that we have our own Wikipedia entry on it now. https://lnkd.in/gdHufBJt in short: over 20k jobs. I was one of those. I know many reading this are too. Many of the games you're going to see were made by studios affected by these layoffs. When it's excused as "necessary for growth", what we know that really means is that the stock didn't go up fast enough, so they inflated it by doing layoffs. If you look through that Wiki list, most of those places were/are profitable. They could afford to keep their people. But it wasn't *enough* for the stock price to have unlimited growth, so they were axed because shareholders think less people = more profits. They aren't capable of long term thinking. The people who make these games are some of the most self-sacrificial people you'll ever meet. For some reason, we're just so dedicated to making the best experiences we can, that we will put ourselves through ridiculous conditions like crunch, relocating our families, taking jobs with no benefits, taking low pay, working in toxic conditions, tolerating aggressively negative player feedback, and so on. People think working in games is fun and "so cool" and it is, but it's also a hell of a lot of work that rarely is acknowledged by the people playing them. So please, as you watch the barrage of advertisements tomorrow, take a moment to think about the developers who went through hell to get those made, and are still going through hell as I type this. And we're not even saving lives or risking our own like public workers or armed forces, we're just trying to give people fun experiences. It should be better than this. I hope for everyone's sake that it is, again.

🌪️ Recent Turbulence in the Video Game Industry Recent reports indicate a significant wave of layoffs impacting major players in the sector. 🔍 Key Points: - The industry has seen approximately 7,800 employees laid off from key companies including Microsoft, Sony, Unity, and Riot. - These layoffs mirror broader trends seen in the tech industry in 2022.

An interesting article in PC GAMER on the number of layoffs in the global gaming industry, if you thought it was over with 2023: "Our own estimated total for 2023's layoffs was 11,250 people (the Obsidian tracker posits at least 10,500), while in 2024 we had already reached nearly 6,000 layoffs (5,900 on the public list) by the end of January. More layoffs have been reported in the early days of February, including an unknown number at Visual Concepts Austin, which Take-Two acquired in 2021." It is sad for the individuals but also financially sound where investors and businesses are more into fundamentals than future dreams. But don´t forget there is a future! https://lnkd.in/djjXv26U

It's hard to see this happen all over the world. To those facing layoffs or stepping into the professional arena with hope and potential, enduring rejections without feedback—remember, it's not a reflection of your worth. Don't internalize the setbacks; it's not about you, it's about the circumstances. Your time to shine will come unexpectedly. Stay resilient, believe in your capabilities, and trust that the right opportunity awaits when you least expected. #gamedevelopment #gamedesign #gamingindustry #layoffs #uxresearch #gameartist

The Very Thinly Hidden Heartbreak: The Emotional Toll of Game Industry Layoffs Remember the feeling when you were little, standing in the game store, holding that cartridge you'd dreamed about for months or even years? That thrill and excitement are the heartbeats of lives shaped by games. I believe there is an often overlooked angle to these game industry layoffs. There's a very real personal impact - lives disrupted, careers lost. There's a very real financial impact - income and expenses on both personal and corporate levels. But one of the biggest, perhaps most emotionally stirring aspects, is the deep emotional element. Games have been the heartbeat of my life. Even at a young age, I knew they were a business. As I grew older, I learned about the industry crashes and past waves of layoffs. This current situation is much worse, but smaller-scale events have occurred before. Throughout all these stories and my own experiences as a late entrant into the field, I held on to the belief - perhaps always a fantasy - that the love for games always came first for those who made them. Tough business decisions were made as a personally aggrieving last resort. Even as I type this, the intense, visceral feelings of picking up and playing hundreds of historically great titles flow through me. These feelings have been the drumbeat of my life. Haven't they been the drumbeat of your life? I believe that if you distill all the emotions and everything I've heard over the last three years, there's a sense that, relative to past industry downturns, something unprecedented is happening. Even if games have always been a business and have always been corporatized, they never felt as purely about dollars and cents as they do now. It has never been as much about wringing out every last dollar for a shrinking number of people at the top as it is now. There's a sense that new entrants into the field don't understand the business, and everyone just wants a piece of the pie because they heard "games = big market = we should do something." There's a sense that the business decisions at the highest levels are sometimes removed from passionate gamers, with top-down decisions coming from those whose real passion is the P&L and who deal with the games part because they have to, and who can't remember the last time they 100% completed a title. I'm not saying that's right. I'm not even saying it's fair. But beyond the very real personal and financial impacts of not having a job or income, I believe this emotional aspect is critical to understanding why this situation is uniquely upsetting. I'm just telling you what I'm hearing, reading, and seeing over and over again. If I'm wrong, tell me so.

Some great insight here from my fellow Electronic Arts (EA) alumn, Mike Williams. The video game business is hit driven and inherently risky. Not every bet will pay off, and recognizing that up front is key. As CFO (or other financial leader), there is a balancing act between supporting and challenging business partners. That does require difficult conversations at times, but it is a business after all and only sustainable when the game & market ultimately align. 

I know the hot topic in the game industry is the mass number of layoffs. I also know that a lot of it has to deal with profit margins/shareholder prices; however, I have seen nothing about what might be the root causes for this. Sure we can talk about games not performing well/living up to, at times, lofty expectations. We can also discuss how inflation and coming out of the pandemic, where people spent more time playing games is a large influence on the amount of layoffs and drop in profit margins. These comments do not go to what I believe are the root causes: 1. Not spending enough time on investing in quality from the beginning of development 2. Not looking at process changes in how games are made to make them better and what their community wants to play Look, I know how making games is a very creative process, but refusing to change what is not working is the definition of insanity. Pushing for not only more testing from the beginning but also for more bug fixing from the beginning is a great start. Whether it be through unit testing or ensuring that done is done, for each sprint/milestone. Be a more 'true' agile process. You could also put bug limits/caps, to each step, but this is too easy to manipulate. Why not just get the high-severity issues in check at each checkpoint? Don't let them sit around. High-severity bug debt is the highest cause of feature creep and not getting everything designers want in their titles. At the end of the day, everyone involved in making a game wants it to be the best possible. What are your thoughts on this? How can we make viable lasting changes, that help our industry not go through this again?

Those who want to join the video game industry must prepare for the possibility that they may have no job security. There has been a massive amount of layoffs in the past recent years, primarily starting after the pandemic. These layoffs have been seen in almost every major gaming company like Microsoft, Riot Games, Unity, Activision-Blizzard, and more. As Nooney pointed out, "This kind of cyclical hiring and firing behavior has been part of the game industry for decades." There are various reasons for these layoffs such as, games failing to create a profit, pandemic overexpansion, and the economy. As someone who intends on joining the industry myself, it is very concerning how little job security I may have. However, I believe that these layoffs in the long-term are not manageable and that the industry will need a massive overhaul. Video games are starting to make more money than other forms of media, however the process behind making them contain many issues that must be addressed. https://lnkd.in/giuP4hC9

💭 What are your thoughts? The gaming industry has been experiencing layoffs in 2023 for several reasons, including: 💲 Overspending: 💲 According to IGN, overspending by developer studios is a factor in the layoffs. Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has said that the company has been spending more money than it earns. 📈 Inflation: 📈 Increased inflation has made money more expensive, which means that companies need to reduce their expenditures. 😷 Pandemic-related factors: 😷 Some developers believe that the layoffs are due to the pandemic. As revenue returns to normal levels, many studios are facing harsh realities. 📆 Delayed release dates: 📆 The delay of many games in development means potential revenue sources are pushed back to 2024 or beyond. 👨💼 Labor issues: 👨💼 The industry has long been dealing with labor issues. ⬆ Rising costs: ⬆ Many AAA companies are either overcrowded or overspending. This could be due to rising costs, poor money management, or high salaries for CEOs. #gamingindustry #layoffs2023 #gamingnews #Layoffs #gamingjobs #workforcecorrection #2024 #gaminglayoffs2024 https://lnkd.in/grQVxSzr.