2023–2024 video game industry layoffs

[The Backwards Man]

How the hell would the Russia-Ukraine war cause layoffs at video game companies?

Not enough people to even pirate your shit games

 

[Steve Pinto]

As one of the 10,000 (it was a lot more than that in reality), it's fun to see a Wikipedia article about it.

A vast majority of those that got fired in my former workplace were engineers, artists and QA. 3D and concept artists had it the worse off since generative AI has completely fucked them.

Nobody who actually makes decisions was effected, obviously.

 

[The I Scream Man]

The cope about all of this is the best part, the delicious icing on the cake and yet another example of indie gaming being superior to all other types

I've said this elsewhere on the normie parts of the internet but for Concord in particular, the vast majority of gamers wouldn't have cared about pronouns and stupid bullshit if the game was any good at all, and my example of this is Hogwarts Legacy

People from our neck of the woods and others who are so inclined complained about the troon bartender and little bullshit like that but since the game was actually good no one seemed to even care about that shit, I sure didn't, I barely noticed because I was actually fucking having fun

That's the problem, I know I'm beating this horse to death and other fine fellows (and ladies, presumably) have made this point better but games are supposed to be fun, no one will buy your game if your selling points and primary features are "non binary", "pronouns", "representation", "diversity"

Not even the people who chug that flavor of cum want to play a game that isn't FUN

 

[TV's Adam West]

>make shit nobody wants to buy
>Nobody buys
>Blame Russia for bad sales
>???
>Layoffs

 

[wrangled tard]

Pandemic is the only one of those that actually makes sense. It turns out if you no longer keep people locked up at home, they no longer have the need to stave off boredom with vidya and prefer simply going outside and touching grass.

It's the main reason, not only was there a significant and unsustainable increase in budgets to match the bubble of the growth in audience but that audience mainly consisted of people who did not usually play video games, skewing what developers thought was the target audience. The bubble burst the second people were let outside again.

 

[AnOminous]

I wonder if we're going to see a January 2025 like January 2024. At the end of the financial year is when the bean-counters often decide to call in the axe-men.

I'm sure some of the people who deserved it actually lost their jobs but in the end 90% of the workers getting fired are blameless for the garbage that gets shat out by these AAA companies and will be easily replaced just in time for tne next pozzmaxxed live service turd. It's the companies themselves that have to go under in order for something to change, but that's never gonna happen.

While I'm sure there are more than a few innocent bystanders here who just wanted a job in vidya, many of these people are wokeshits who were hired for being wokeshits who wanted to produce wokeshit and had no clue how to make actual games. Concord is a pretty perfect example of this.

 

[CaliforniaRaisin]

Who gives a shit about the AAA industry? Will this finally kill day one dlc, always online DRM, pre orders and broken delivery all with seasons and micro transactions for literally everything? No?

Fuck it. I'm staying with indi.

 

[Battlefield2142EU]

They even blame Russia - Ukraine war.

How the hell would the Russia-Ukraine war cause layoffs at video game companies?

Ukraine is still somewhat trendy. It is more logical to blame the Gaza war because the war is close to trading ports. But journalists hate Israel. But don't have the guts to blame Israel.

 

[Sperglord666]

Hey, Extra Credits, explain to us again how raising the price of a standard game to $70 was totally justified and business savy!

Video games are a luxury. If the price of basic essentials goes up, people spend less on luxuries. You don't raise the price of luxury products when some people can't even afford food. Fuck me, that's not even a capitalist idea, that's just how an economy works on the most basic level.

 

[Big Green]

Something I talk about a lot with my friends who used to play games is how there hasn't been a great game in over a decade. My bar isn't even that high, I just want something I can sink my teeth into without hours of cutscenes and bullshit. The industry is just that fucked though that they can't make fun games even on accident.

 

[Town Drunk]

Hey, Extra Credits, explain to us again how raising the price of a standard game to $70 was totally justified and business savy!

Video games are a luxury. If the price of basic essentials goes up, people spend less on luxuries. You don't raise the price of luxury products when some people can't even afford food. Fuck me, that's not even a capitalist idea, that's just how an economy works on the most basic level.

Fuck Extra Credits with a rake, but expecting a price point on anything to stay fixed is retarded.

If it costs more to make a product, than it costs more to buy it.

That said, the studios are bloated as fuck. The failure of Concorde as an example. 200 million dollars on an arena shooter. I can't even imagine where that money went.

 

[Well-groomed Discord User]

It's hilarious that they blame the Russian invasion of Ukraine for the layoffs, while Concord's fresh body glows in the background like a video game collectible, trying to teach them an important lesson they'd rather ignore.

This industry is destined to crash hard cause the people making the decisions are suits or creatives who don't care about the medium and despise their audience. They never learn a lesson as they are paid astronomical sums of money to crash and burn companies, they see it as another stepping stone, the only people who suffer are the workers with technical skills that take half a lifetime to develop but live on a paycheck to paycheck basis.

And because they despise you, they will try to publicly shame and humiliate you for complaining about the obvious things, but when their product inevitably fails, they will blame you for being unwilling to eat their slop and pay for the meal.

You might be pleased to see this kind of trash fail in what it seems to be an endless cycle, but the people responsible for this rubbish get promoted, make new contacts and win big bags of cash with every studio that goes under.

 

[stupid frog]

Over on KiA2 there's speculation that there could be another vidya crash, like the one in '83.

Good.
I have a backlog and indies will still be made.

You are irrelevant, AAA.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

How the hell would the Russia-Ukraine war cause layoffs at video game companies?

The idea of "go woke go broke" goes against The Narrative™ which says that "woke" is "progress", so SJW-infiltrated Wikipedia is desperately trying to come up with lame BS.

You are irrelevant, AAA.

I think the last major Western vidya I got was Civilization VI, which was a 2016 release. And I still think II is better than VI BTW.

 

[stupid frog]

I think the last major Western vidya I got was Civilization VI, which was a 2016 release. And I still think II is better than VI BTW.

CIV THREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

 

[One Quick Post]

The last decade has seen the release of some of the greatest games I have ever played, and zero of them have been made by a big studio. Why can't you fuckers manage to make a game a tenth as fun as Hotline Miami 2, Cuphead, or Pizza Tower? Then you have the issue of "diversity," Team Fortress 2 is one of the greatest FPS games ever made and one of the starring cast is a disabled black scottish man, and it sells it because it's so damn charming. Meanwhile that fat negress with purple hair from Concord looks like she's about to give me a feminist studies lecture, nobody wants a game to lecture them. People are getting real tired of the demonization of beauty and the glorification of ugliness. Make your characters, well, charismatic!

Then of course, there's the matter of monetization. Terraria has had 13 years of free updates and despite the devs continually saying they're done they keep coming back for more because they love their game. When you rip out parts of your game to sell as DLC, adjust your XP curve to coax players into buying "boosts," etc, you not only nickle and dime your customers but you taint the passion your developers had for your game, you kill a little of its soul each extra penny you suck out of it until there's nothing left but a rotting husk. It gets tiring on consumers too, even just seeing an in game shop with "gems" (obfuscated real money) or whatever disgusts me at this point.

Another thing to consider is the raw magnitude of the competition, this isn't the 1990s anymore, you're not competing with some nerds passing about shareware floppy discs and a small pool of games on the same console. You are now competing with a thriving, easily accessible online marketplace of amazing creators, and a gigantic backlog of great unplayed games. You're not just competing with the AAA hits of 2024, if I don't like your game there's good shit from 2004 I haven't played. If we're "not your audience" that's just fine. Good luck with that.

I could go on all day, I haven't even mentioned how much these shitty games cost to make, there's problem after problem and people just don't have to put up with it. People aren't even bothering to pirate this trash! But by all means, blame everything but yourself, it's not the stale "follow the shiny yellow line to the next tired dialogue" gameplay, it's Russia's fault! Maybe if you put a few more millions into your next game it'll make up for the fact that it's not fun and it has all the charm of a brick to the face.

 

[Counterfeit Obol]

I think the last major Western vidya I got was Civilization VI, which was a 2016 release. And I still think II is better than VI BTW.

The last AAA purchase I made was Atomic Heart, and even then I stopped playing it because I was burning through the story too fast. Pace yourself, y'know?
The obstacle course rewards could have been balanced better, but the game itself was... fine.

Meanwhile, my last indie purchases have been Balatro, and Rimworld/Vampire Survivors DLCs.

 

[Patrick Bait-man]

Fuck it. I'm staying with indi.

Not even Indie gaming is in a very good state.

I find it very stale today with the same fucking type of games being released (2D pixel art platformer / RPG with an allegory for mental shit, retro 3D-styled game usually also a platformer that flops at capturing the aesthetic, walking simulator with a similar cutesy artstyle, etc), and it's equally pozzed with many trannies being involved in the scene and often sneaking their fetish / political agenda into their games.


Modern gaming in general just fucking sucks and I'm so tired of it.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

sneaking their fetish / political agenda

Dunno of any new game by at least Western developers -- major or indie -- that doesn't go with that "body type A or body type B" BS.

Since when did "are you a boy or a girl" become so "problematic"?

 

[FedPostalService]

In the event of another video game crash, at least you'd have ample choices of video games to fall back on while the current video game industry resolves itself.

I suspect GTA VI will be THE contributing factor of a possible crash.

I’m really hoping that GTA VI is such utter woke trash that even the Shark Card zombies fuck off and start playing FIFA again.

I want it to die on its arse so badly.

That will the the herald of change. Even Bethesda will have to wake up then.

I'd flip that number. I'd say only 10% are blameless.
Jim the janitor and Sarah the secretary? Blameless.
Managers? 100% can be blamed. It was their decisions that did this. They're also the most likely to fail upwards.
As for artists, programmers, etc. They should've seen the writing on the wall, and either quit, or at least had an exit plan.


So did the crash of 83. Games like Elite, Dizzy, and Chuckie Egg were classics in their day. I know we're not supposed to mention them because it breaks the apocalyptic wasteland of games myth. The modern equivalent would be Palworld and Helldivers 2.

I always hear Burgers talking about the ‘83 crash like it was an apocalyptic event whilst us Europoors sat around with our ZX Spectrums and C64s having a great old times.