2023–2024 video game industry layoffs

  • 🐕 I am attempting to get the site runnning as fast as possible. If you are experiencing slow page load times, please report it.
That didn't stopped games like Doom and Animal Crossing New Horizon to get released during "pandemic" and print money.
That's exactly why they printed money. If they came out later, they wouldn't, or at least not as much.
Pandemic created extra temporary demand that disappeared later, and if you as a gamedev company overinvested, you had to scale back quick.
The scamdemic was what put the economy in such a shitty place to begin with. The money spigot was cut off and we got lots and lots of inflation plus got lots of people using "muh pandemic" and "work from home" as an excuse to do nothing.
Yeah, the causal chain is pandemic, then shitty economy, then increased interest rates, then fewer risky investments (like vidya).
 
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.
Even if the game is a turd it will probably sale off name recognition and the amount of time people have been playing GTA5 online.

Now will it make back everything from being a live service game? Who knows but I was shocked GTA5 Oline did as well as it did.
 
Maybe if you made good games and not trash this wouldn't happen.
But is that actually true?

It seems like a lot of these big companies, in pursuit of an "Infinite growth, infinite profit" scheme, have created production sizes and budgets that are totally unreasonable and require them to create games that sell to ridiculous levels, or which have features designed to extract more money out of the playerbase on an ongoing basis. They keep pumping money into paying for loads of nonsense that doesn't actually improve the games or help them sell any better.

Ubisoft (at least according to a google search I just did) has fucking 2000 people working on Assassins Creed, and they're planning to get 800 more. How do you sustain that, especially in a time when people have more options than ever not to pay you, and games can compete made by teams of like 5 people?

AAA development is completely out of hand, even if they were making ok games I think a collapse in inevitable.
 
Now will it make back everything from being a live service game? Who knows but I was shocked GTA5 Oline did as well as it did.
I would point out that sequels to successful "live service" games have almost never replicated their predecessor's success. Even being a good game and a sales success is no guarantee because it's all about that exponential positive feedback loop of being in the right place at the right time.
 
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.
I'm sure that the programmers who had no say in creative decisions were the ones who deserved it the most.
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.

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.
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.
 
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.
Disagree. The scale of video game ownership is much larger now than it was around that time. Video games then were an unproven fad. I cannot see video games being massively unpopular anymore, just not feasible enough to afford the latest title or commit to a live service. The optimist in me sees a potential crash turn into a retro resurgence into older video games thanks to emulation and fan made projects.
 
I don't see how those two points contradict. We already know people are playing older games. We already know there's a bunch of viral indies. People try to write off games like Palworld and Buckshot Roulette as YouTube bait, but the fact remains they were popular.
 
Disagree. The scale of video game ownership is much larger now than it was around that time. Video games then were an unproven fad. I cannot see video games being massively unpopular anymore, just not feasible enough to afford the latest title or commit to a live service. The optimist in me sees a potential crash turn into a retro resurgence into older video games thanks to emulation and fan made projects.
Fuck retro as a theme tbh. We need to stop rehashing the same old AOE2/Quake/Doom/Metrovania spinoffs in this increasingly surreal nostalgia ridden age. More games like Palworld, Starsector and Factorio that's actually doing their own thing instead of wallowing in nostalgia.
 
Fuck retro as a theme tbh. We need to stop rehashing the same old AOE2/Quake/Doom/Metrovania spinoffs in this increasingly surreal nostalgia ridden age. More games like Palworld, Starsector and Factorio that's actually doing their own thing instead of wallowing in nostalgia.
We wouldn't have a crash if games actually evolved beyond greedy monetization. How hard is it to make games that people actually want to play?
 
  • Like
Reactions: Lord Xenu
They hired a lot of people during the lockdowns because people were playing more games. Now that there's no one to arrest them for going outside they stopped playing as much, companies realized they have dead weight and fired them. Video games being shit is just because companies are run by retards and shareholding retards. Concord spent nearly a decade in development.

It's that shrimple.
 
Back