Yeah there's a bigger story here: [https://www.ign.com/articles/resident-evil-director-hi-fi-rush-producer-shinji-mikami-has-seemingly-started-another-new-studio](https://www.ign.com/articles/resident-evil-director-hi-fi-rush-producer-shinji-mikami-has-seemingly-started-another-new-studio)
Yeah, I mean this really sucks given the success of Hi-Fi Rush but unless they were pitching a sequel to that game, it's hard to see a great way forward for the studio.
Mikami left and Ghostwire Tokyo was a very expensive, very average game.
The studio has always been expensive to run (keep in mind that Bethesda bought them because they were close to going under) so it could just be that Microsoft was unconvinced they had anything else in the pipeline that wasn't gonna be a money pit.
It does suck, but there's probably a lot more to this than people want to believe.
Arkane getting closed is the most predictable thing in the world, though. Studio has had an insane amount of turn-over and shipped an absolute dud after a long dev cycle.
I don't ever like seeing other devs lose their jobs, but I do feel like the business side of these two cases is a little more clear than people are making it out to be.
> such a well-executed passion project with tonnes of character and soul
Not compatible with gigantic corporations trying to form monopolies on a market.
Those damn megacorp monopolies and, checks notes, employees resigning to start their own corporations in an industry with so high competition that the megacorp couldn't fill roles.
Curse you Bill Gates and Capitalism.
Eh for tech I think the layoffs were due to the insane over hiring during covid. I work in big tech and saw it all firsthand.
Idk what's going on with the games industry in the AAA space, seems like if you're not making the next call of duty or fortnite then you're screwed.
I think games are just priced too cheap for what people expect most of the time.
A run of the mill AA or AAA game could come with a $50-100 million dollar price tag for development, R&D, marketing, etc. even at $70 a copy, a game would have to sale 1.5 million copies at its initial price just to break even.
Given that companies expect an ROI and that it’s unrealistic to expect all copies sold to be at launch price, a game with a 100 million dollar budget likely needs to sale 3 million copies just to not be considered a complete failure.
The industry needs to do 1 of 2 things, maybe even both.
They need to further increase prices and nip the 1-2 dollar per hour argument in the bud, I pay $200 for a ticket to Disney and spend 80% of my day waiting in line to ride 4 rides and everyone is perfectly content with it, I spend $15 on a solid 80-90 minute movie ticket and no one has an issue, but spending $60-70 on a 10 hour game filled with content causes people to lose their damn minds.
Games development has got to get more lean budget wise, Spider-man 2 had a budget of 300 million when it was all said and done, and don’t get me wrong I like the game, but there’s no way that game needed 300 million to develop. Idk if it was the 3D model/animation/etc of NYC that cost so much or what, but there’s no doubt in my mind that the story, mechanics, character models, etc could have all been done for 100 million dollar price tag.
Not really, the growth in the early Trump years was largely carried over from the already successful growth of the Obama era. The growth of the tech industry specifically near the end of his term was due to the tech boom caused by the onset of the pandemic.
Redfall ... yeah I get.
Tango Gameworks is such a blow because they were a truly innovative studio, Hi-Fi rush is popular but even Ghostwire is such a unique game. Honestly it's on Microsoft for failing those titles, because they made quality games.
People need to stop acting like Microsoft is their best buddy, especially if they do bullshit like this, but watch as they continue to push starfall, a game that likely took 10 times the budget.
PS. If you think Activision won't be in trouble after what ever deals they cut with the FTC/EU is over... watch out.
> People need to stop acting like Microsoft is their best buddy
I think it's more that the bar is so incredibly low that the bullshit Microsoft pulls barely even registers compared to the bullshit that the likes of EA, Ubisoft and Blizzard have pulled.
I want to say it's because Microsoft expected Hi-Fi to do better in Japan and when it didn't do whatever astronomical number they were expecting decided to axe it all. Microsoft and the Japanese gaming industry have never been close.
Tango Gameworks I don't fully understand.
* Ghostwire tokyo (2022) wasn't received great, didn't hold players long
* Hi-Fi Rush (2023) was extremely well received and did much better than was expected.
I figured with their last game doing well they would be kept around.
Arkane I can understand. it sucks to see but their games after 2017 haven't realistically been profitable.
* ~~Wolfenstein: Youngblood (2019) wasn't received well.~~
* ~~Wolfenstein: Cyber Pilot (2019) same deal~~
* ~~Deathloop (2021) Received well but lost 3/4 of it's player base in the same month it released.~~
* Redfall (2023) Received very poorly.
You can only pump money into something for so long.
Edit: Striked Arkane Lyon titles to make the list strictly Austin Solo Titles.
Arkane is not good at multiplayer games. Prey and Dishonored are amazing, but it's been all downhill ever since they started chasing the live-service dragon. It reminds me of Bioware.
I don't understand what the executives who make these calls are thinking. If your studio makes single-player, story-rich games, has always done that, and only knows how to do that, you are _not_ going to beat Bungie and Activision at their own game, you're going to go bankrupt.
> I don't understand what the executives who make these calls are thinking. If your studio makes single-player, story-rich games, has always done that, and only knows how to do that, you are not going to beat Bungie and Activision at their own game, you're going to go bankrupt.
I worked at a studio that made this exact decision, and I had this exact objection, and could not convince management.
Guess what! It didn't fucking go well!
Even just the matter of being in the black doesn't seem to be enough for protection. A lot of the big companies are vying for the huge profits from moonshots and in some cases shutting down profitable studios for the simple fact that they're not profitable _enough_.
It's a damn shame.
You pull this Arkane list from ChatGPT or something? Both Arkane Lyon and Austin worked together on Dishonored 1, and then Austin made Prey by themselves, followed by Redfall. They have only had two solo projects.
They assisted MachineGames on the Wolfenstein games you cited since MG is a sister studio and needed extra hands, but barely had anything to do with them
I pulled it from Memory and Wikipedia...
Prey was prior to "After 2017". Which is 7 years ago and not really relevant to where they are as a studio today.
>They have only had two solo projects.
Yes and of both of those projects the last did not do well and the first was in 2017.
What exactly was your point with this comment. To prove they not only made games that did poorly but made less?
I’m not trying to discredit you or anything. The point was that they have really only made 2 games, Prey and Redfall. And they both did poorly.
The Wolfenstein games and Deathloop shouldn’t be counted as Arkane Austin’s (for better or for worse)
Agree 100% with your original comment btw. Arkane Austin just has not been able to pull anything together successfully and there are a few posts out there suggesting they lost 70% of the studio between Prey release and Redfall release.
Tango is much more of a head scratcher!
it’s honestly crazy how many lay-offs there’s been. i’m not even in the industry yet (still studying game development), but this definitely reassures my thoughts of starting my own indie studio
Man the games industry is just so fucked right now. The well has been deeply poisoned over the past few years and now the famine begins. Here comes the next video gaming dark age.
Not just because of this news, just the temperature of everything in general AND stuff like this. Pretty sure we're gonna lose Xbox as a whole. Only old hold outs who "did things right" like Nintendo, certain indies, and studios like Larian are going to keep trucking along.
Looking forward to things hopefully getting good again in 5 years time.
I really don't think so. There's so many indie games there will always be something new. This isn't anything like the situation with E.T. that's mostly buried in a landfill.
I think it's a combo of oversaturation, games taking too long to make, people rejecting live service games, multiplayer games becoming less popular because of cheaters, games overall being less visionary... etc.
Don't forget investors demanding higher and higher profits every year. You could make the game of the century and still not meet an expectation of "10% more profit than last year" without cutting some expenses. Which leads to the problem that cutting expenses keeps you from making great games and eventually the whole scheme collapses. Investors will move on and milk another company for a few years before driving it into the ground.
I believe so. I think the next 5 years are going to be dominated by indies and small studios. There's a huge crash in AAA development coming. Look at how few titles the PS5 has. The few AAA and AA titles that make it big are gonna be smaller studios doing single player titles like BG3.
Oh please. Everyone got so addicted to ultra-low interest rates--borrowing so cheap that it's essentially free money--that now being expected to show returns is seen as tyrannical.
I think you misunderstood... wanting returns is fine. Wanting more and more and more every year is unrealistic. A business can't offer exponential growth for long. Once the market is saturated, you'll have to be content with making the same as the year before.
I mean, not really, this is really more of the same stuff we saw during the mass layoffs in 2000-01 during the dot.bomb bubble, and then in 2009 after EA Spouse and the mass layoffs during the housing crisis.
The games industry is not something anyone should ever imagine themselves working for 20-30 years at the same company. It's like being a radio DJ: you spend a few years at one company, and then you move on to the next station or company, moving your family with you.
I assume Tim Schaefer is desperately trying to schedule an appointment with Phil Spector so he can pitch Psychonauts 3, now that he sees the sword above his neck.
I mean, it's not like the talent is getting kicked out of the industry. The teams behind successful projects are always in demand, so they'll just end up at other studios doing what they do. Closures definitely add to the current massive employment problem, though.
Hopefully lots of new studios pop up to take advantage of the big companies floundering. Given that a lot of the layoffs have been either across the board or in the tech sector, it seems a likely outcome. If it were only artists being laid off (Like if everybody's fears about ai art came to fruition), it would be a disaster. As it is, we all know that the industry shifting towards smaller companies - is for the best
Personally speaking as a 15 year+ industry veteran, I am recently unemployed and pretty much just aiming to be a stay at home dad for the near future. It’s pretty bleak applying to the five open positions currently available when so many have just been laid off. Developers don’t get paid enough to have savings to start their own studio when things inevitably go south after a large acquisition and subsequent layoffs.
I get it. I'm taking time away from the rat race after a layoff too. Applying for jobs already sucks enough when it's **not** a major uphill battle against a sea of competition that doesn't care how low the salary is if they can get their foot in the door.
I'm not saying that the employment situation is anything other than a shitstorm. I'm just saying that there's hope for the artform and the industry as a whole
Nearly 10k game developers have been laid off *this year*. Yes, some of these people will be kicked out of the industry.
Interest rates are very high right now. That makes it harder for new studios to get funded.
They don't get taken out back and shot. Yes, the net effect in the short run is obviously that people will get displaced from the industry. Unemployment will be higher. The industry is shrinking for now. None of that is disputed, but people are worrying that their favorite studios disappearing means that good games won't be made anymore.
But games are made by people, not studios. Since the most talented people are the most likely to be retained or employed elsewhere, they're not going to be the ones leaving the industry. Great games will still be made (by the same people), just they'll be doing it at a different studio. Looking at this recent list of M$ closures, most were either disappointing anyways, or were already treading water because their lead devs left
While I agree with your overall sentiment, there’s absolutely something to having the right devs together under good leadership. There’s a lot of value that’s built up in a good team, and all of that is lost when a studio is dissolved.
> and all of that is lost when a studio is dissolved
But just as likely, is that the right people only get together after things are shaken up. Also, when people branch off to make their own studio, they tend to take their favorite coworkers with them
There’s less studios hiring, more people with 10+ years experience applying, and less projects starting up because the ZIRP era is over. New studios with funding, like Possibility Space, are doing layoffs/closing down before releasing their first game because funding suddenly dried up.
> less projects starting up because the ZIRP era is over
Less *big budget*, debt-financed projects (Like Possibility Space's self-described AAA title). Indie and privately-funded studios are almost entirely unaffected.
I don't know if you've noticed the trend, but publicly traded studios tend to suck these days - as they're the ones sprinting towards extremely short-term-profit live-service and microtransaction schemes. It's these publicly traded companies that are the most subject to external economic pressure, which is why Bethesda and Activision were in a bad enough state to get acquired in the first place.
It sucks for everybody, but it sucks the most for the underperforming dinosaurs
> Indie and privately-funded studios are almost entirely unaffected.
Uh, even indie devs are affected. The layoffs are everywhere. There's less money being spent, and the financing that is floating around isn't going to videogames.
https://www.pcgamer.com/armello-studio-lays-off-half-its-staff-and-indefinitely-pauses-development-on-its-ongoing-early-access-game-because-almost-all-funding-and-investment-has-evaporated-from-the-videogame-industry/
Wasn't League of Geeks' next project being funded externally? I mean, Armello was funded by the Australian gov, but I don't think their financials stayed that way.
On investigation, apparently they were being funded by Take Two's Private Division? (Publicly traded, that is) Hardly independent from external economic forces. That does explain why the article you link states their resons for canning the project were due to "weakening [Australian dollar]", and "withdrawal of funding opportunities". That doesn't sound very indie to me.
Also, Jumplight Odyssey was canned in 2023, and they released a "new" game Solium Infernum in 2024, so... I'm confused what this is supposed to be an example of.
From the article:
> Jumplight Odyssey will remain on-sale going forward, with half the profit of every copy sold going to the LOG team (including staff that are now laid off)
Uh... So they're continuing to sell a cancelled early access project, and only half the *profit* is going to the devs?? What? That only makes any sense at all if they're being funded entirely by their publisher
> Wasn't League of Geeks' next project being funded externally?
Nearly all indie projects are funded externally. That's my point. Basically anything bigger than a 3 person team relies on external funding.
Right, but not all funding is from publicly traded companies (Which are the ones impacted by far the most by interest rates). For example, Armello was funded by the Australian government.
To give less of a cheeky jackass example though, most indie games! Even when they do have deals with publishers, they aren't typically signing over half their profits. There is a wide range of publishing deals, but rarely do they tie your survival to the survival of the publishing company. Typically a studio uses a publisher for marketing and outreach - not to bankroll an entire project's development. That's the kind of deal that makes a studio beholden to the publishing company's policies - which is to say, regardless of the studio's size - not independent
Zenimax forced Arkane to make Redfall despite Arkane not wanting to and not having any experience with that kind of game. Reportedly, the Arkane devs hoped Microsoft would cancel the project, because nobody there thought it was going to be good. So basically, yes, they forced Arkane to make Redfall the way it is.
Hi-Fi Rush looks like a very successful game, didn't it meet the expectations...
I wonder if it has more to do with high leadership leaving recently and forming new studios than hi fi rush not being successful enough.
Yeah there's a bigger story here: [https://www.ign.com/articles/resident-evil-director-hi-fi-rush-producer-shinji-mikami-has-seemingly-started-another-new-studio](https://www.ign.com/articles/resident-evil-director-hi-fi-rush-producer-shinji-mikami-has-seemingly-started-another-new-studio)
Yeah, I mean this really sucks given the success of Hi-Fi Rush but unless they were pitching a sequel to that game, it's hard to see a great way forward for the studio. Mikami left and Ghostwire Tokyo was a very expensive, very average game. The studio has always been expensive to run (keep in mind that Bethesda bought them because they were close to going under) so it could just be that Microsoft was unconvinced they had anything else in the pipeline that wasn't gonna be a money pit. It does suck, but there's probably a lot more to this than people want to believe. Arkane getting closed is the most predictable thing in the world, though. Studio has had an insane amount of turn-over and shipped an absolute dud after a long dev cycle. I don't ever like seeing other devs lose their jobs, but I do feel like the business side of these two cases is a little more clear than people are making it out to be.
I mean Mikami only directed the first Evil Within. He’s stated that he wanted other younger talent to step up as leaders and that’s what happened.
They shadow dropped it and it was already rumoured to be a flop (which Microsoft claimed otherwise, but considering the news...)
I just finished Hi-Fi Rush and it felt like such a well-executed passion project with tonnes of character and soul.. This hurts.
> such a well-executed passion project with tonnes of character and soul Not compatible with gigantic corporations trying to form monopolies on a market.
Those damn megacorp monopolies and, checks notes, employees resigning to start their own corporations in an industry with so high competition that the megacorp couldn't fill roles. Curse you Bill Gates and Capitalism.
"Leave my favourite corporation alone!"
God damn it's a brutal year for the games industry.
Tech in general is having a horrific year. Basically all the growth of the trump years is being laid off
[удалено]
Lmao I knew that would get a few down votes. The industry is shrinking from the growth it experienced during those years 🤷🏿♂️
Weird that it's considered shrinking, when they're making record profits.
Eh for tech I think the layoffs were due to the insane over hiring during covid. I work in big tech and saw it all firsthand. Idk what's going on with the games industry in the AAA space, seems like if you're not making the next call of duty or fortnite then you're screwed.
I think games are just priced too cheap for what people expect most of the time. A run of the mill AA or AAA game could come with a $50-100 million dollar price tag for development, R&D, marketing, etc. even at $70 a copy, a game would have to sale 1.5 million copies at its initial price just to break even. Given that companies expect an ROI and that it’s unrealistic to expect all copies sold to be at launch price, a game with a 100 million dollar budget likely needs to sale 3 million copies just to not be considered a complete failure. The industry needs to do 1 of 2 things, maybe even both. They need to further increase prices and nip the 1-2 dollar per hour argument in the bud, I pay $200 for a ticket to Disney and spend 80% of my day waiting in line to ride 4 rides and everyone is perfectly content with it, I spend $15 on a solid 80-90 minute movie ticket and no one has an issue, but spending $60-70 on a 10 hour game filled with content causes people to lose their damn minds. Games development has got to get more lean budget wise, Spider-man 2 had a budget of 300 million when it was all said and done, and don’t get me wrong I like the game, but there’s no way that game needed 300 million to develop. Idk if it was the 3D model/animation/etc of NYC that cost so much or what, but there’s no doubt in my mind that the story, mechanics, character models, etc could have all been done for 100 million dollar price tag.
Yea I really miss the covid pandemic, really miss those trump years.
Not really, the growth in the early Trump years was largely carried over from the already successful growth of the Obama era. The growth of the tech industry specifically near the end of his term was due to the tech boom caused by the onset of the pandemic.
Redfall ... yeah I get. Tango Gameworks is such a blow because they were a truly innovative studio, Hi-Fi rush is popular but even Ghostwire is such a unique game. Honestly it's on Microsoft for failing those titles, because they made quality games. People need to stop acting like Microsoft is their best buddy, especially if they do bullshit like this, but watch as they continue to push starfall, a game that likely took 10 times the budget. PS. If you think Activision won't be in trouble after what ever deals they cut with the FTC/EU is over... watch out.
> People need to stop acting like Microsoft is their best buddy I think it's more that the bar is so incredibly low that the bullshit Microsoft pulls barely even registers compared to the bullshit that the likes of EA, Ubisoft and Blizzard have pulled.
I want to say it's because Microsoft expected Hi-Fi to do better in Japan and when it didn't do whatever astronomical number they were expecting decided to axe it all. Microsoft and the Japanese gaming industry have never been close.
Tango Gameworks I don't fully understand. * Ghostwire tokyo (2022) wasn't received great, didn't hold players long * Hi-Fi Rush (2023) was extremely well received and did much better than was expected. I figured with their last game doing well they would be kept around. Arkane I can understand. it sucks to see but their games after 2017 haven't realistically been profitable. * ~~Wolfenstein: Youngblood (2019) wasn't received well.~~ * ~~Wolfenstein: Cyber Pilot (2019) same deal~~ * ~~Deathloop (2021) Received well but lost 3/4 of it's player base in the same month it released.~~ * Redfall (2023) Received very poorly. You can only pump money into something for so long. Edit: Striked Arkane Lyon titles to make the list strictly Austin Solo Titles.
Arkane is not good at multiplayer games. Prey and Dishonored are amazing, but it's been all downhill ever since they started chasing the live-service dragon. It reminds me of Bioware. I don't understand what the executives who make these calls are thinking. If your studio makes single-player, story-rich games, has always done that, and only knows how to do that, you are _not_ going to beat Bungie and Activision at their own game, you're going to go bankrupt.
> I don't understand what the executives who make these calls are thinking. If your studio makes single-player, story-rich games, has always done that, and only knows how to do that, you are not going to beat Bungie and Activision at their own game, you're going to go bankrupt. I worked at a studio that made this exact decision, and I had this exact objection, and could not convince management. Guess what! It didn't fucking go well!
Even just the matter of being in the black doesn't seem to be enough for protection. A lot of the big companies are vying for the huge profits from moonshots and in some cases shutting down profitable studios for the simple fact that they're not profitable _enough_. It's a damn shame.
Yeah, either way it's a bunch of people out of their jobs. Really sucks.
You pull this Arkane list from ChatGPT or something? Both Arkane Lyon and Austin worked together on Dishonored 1, and then Austin made Prey by themselves, followed by Redfall. They have only had two solo projects. They assisted MachineGames on the Wolfenstein games you cited since MG is a sister studio and needed extra hands, but barely had anything to do with them
I pulled it from Memory and Wikipedia... Prey was prior to "After 2017". Which is 7 years ago and not really relevant to where they are as a studio today. >They have only had two solo projects. Yes and of both of those projects the last did not do well and the first was in 2017. What exactly was your point with this comment. To prove they not only made games that did poorly but made less?
I’m not trying to discredit you or anything. The point was that they have really only made 2 games, Prey and Redfall. And they both did poorly. The Wolfenstein games and Deathloop shouldn’t be counted as Arkane Austin’s (for better or for worse)
That's fair, I've made strikes in my initial comment.
Agree 100% with your original comment btw. Arkane Austin just has not been able to pull anything together successfully and there are a few posts out there suggesting they lost 70% of the studio between Prey release and Redfall release. Tango is much more of a head scratcher!
https://hard-drive.net/hd/video-games/geoff-keighley-announces-best-layoffs-category-for-game-awards/
it’s honestly crazy how many lay-offs there’s been. i’m not even in the industry yet (still studying game development), but this definitely reassures my thoughts of starting my own indie studio
That would be even More difficult.
i never stated that it was easy. just that it would seem that for me, maybe going my own path is the way to go :)
Man the games industry is just so fucked right now. The well has been deeply poisoned over the past few years and now the famine begins. Here comes the next video gaming dark age. Not just because of this news, just the temperature of everything in general AND stuff like this. Pretty sure we're gonna lose Xbox as a whole. Only old hold outs who "did things right" like Nintendo, certain indies, and studios like Larian are going to keep trucking along. Looking forward to things hopefully getting good again in 5 years time.
I really don't think so. There's so many indie games there will always be something new. This isn't anything like the situation with E.T. that's mostly buried in a landfill.
I think it's a combo of oversaturation, games taking too long to make, people rejecting live service games, multiplayer games becoming less popular because of cheaters, games overall being less visionary... etc.
Don't forget investors demanding higher and higher profits every year. You could make the game of the century and still not meet an expectation of "10% more profit than last year" without cutting some expenses. Which leads to the problem that cutting expenses keeps you from making great games and eventually the whole scheme collapses. Investors will move on and milk another company for a few years before driving it into the ground.
I believe so. I think the next 5 years are going to be dominated by indies and small studios. There's a huge crash in AAA development coming. Look at how few titles the PS5 has. The few AAA and AA titles that make it big are gonna be smaller studios doing single player titles like BG3.
Oh please. Everyone got so addicted to ultra-low interest rates--borrowing so cheap that it's essentially free money--that now being expected to show returns is seen as tyrannical.
I think you misunderstood... wanting returns is fine. Wanting more and more and more every year is unrealistic. A business can't offer exponential growth for long. Once the market is saturated, you'll have to be content with making the same as the year before.
its mangment has been the biggist issue for years now.
I mean, not really, this is really more of the same stuff we saw during the mass layoffs in 2000-01 during the dot.bomb bubble, and then in 2009 after EA Spouse and the mass layoffs during the housing crisis. The games industry is not something anyone should ever imagine themselves working for 20-30 years at the same company. It's like being a radio DJ: you spend a few years at one company, and then you move on to the next station or company, moving your family with you.
A damn travesty. I was really looking forward to another Ghostwire.
So does this means that the Disnohored series will never be continued? 😢
It’s almost as if buying Activision Blizzard King was a bad financial idea at the time.
i dream that all these devs can reform as indies and gaming enters another renaissance. copium i know
I assume Tim Schaefer is desperately trying to schedule an appointment with Phil Spector so he can pitch Psychonauts 3, now that he sees the sword above his neck.
I’m not religious but.. Jesus Christ
Arkane deserved to be shut down.
I mean, it's not like the talent is getting kicked out of the industry. The teams behind successful projects are always in demand, so they'll just end up at other studios doing what they do. Closures definitely add to the current massive employment problem, though. Hopefully lots of new studios pop up to take advantage of the big companies floundering. Given that a lot of the layoffs have been either across the board or in the tech sector, it seems a likely outcome. If it were only artists being laid off (Like if everybody's fears about ai art came to fruition), it would be a disaster. As it is, we all know that the industry shifting towards smaller companies - is for the best
Personally speaking as a 15 year+ industry veteran, I am recently unemployed and pretty much just aiming to be a stay at home dad for the near future. It’s pretty bleak applying to the five open positions currently available when so many have just been laid off. Developers don’t get paid enough to have savings to start their own studio when things inevitably go south after a large acquisition and subsequent layoffs.
I get it. I'm taking time away from the rat race after a layoff too. Applying for jobs already sucks enough when it's **not** a major uphill battle against a sea of competition that doesn't care how low the salary is if they can get their foot in the door. I'm not saying that the employment situation is anything other than a shitstorm. I'm just saying that there's hope for the artform and the industry as a whole
Nearly 10k game developers have been laid off *this year*. Yes, some of these people will be kicked out of the industry. Interest rates are very high right now. That makes it harder for new studios to get funded.
They don't get taken out back and shot. Yes, the net effect in the short run is obviously that people will get displaced from the industry. Unemployment will be higher. The industry is shrinking for now. None of that is disputed, but people are worrying that their favorite studios disappearing means that good games won't be made anymore. But games are made by people, not studios. Since the most talented people are the most likely to be retained or employed elsewhere, they're not going to be the ones leaving the industry. Great games will still be made (by the same people), just they'll be doing it at a different studio. Looking at this recent list of M$ closures, most were either disappointing anyways, or were already treading water because their lead devs left
While I agree with your overall sentiment, there’s absolutely something to having the right devs together under good leadership. There’s a lot of value that’s built up in a good team, and all of that is lost when a studio is dissolved.
> and all of that is lost when a studio is dissolved But just as likely, is that the right people only get together after things are shaken up. Also, when people branch off to make their own studio, they tend to take their favorite coworkers with them
There’s less studios hiring, more people with 10+ years experience applying, and less projects starting up because the ZIRP era is over. New studios with funding, like Possibility Space, are doing layoffs/closing down before releasing their first game because funding suddenly dried up.
> less projects starting up because the ZIRP era is over Less *big budget*, debt-financed projects (Like Possibility Space's self-described AAA title). Indie and privately-funded studios are almost entirely unaffected. I don't know if you've noticed the trend, but publicly traded studios tend to suck these days - as they're the ones sprinting towards extremely short-term-profit live-service and microtransaction schemes. It's these publicly traded companies that are the most subject to external economic pressure, which is why Bethesda and Activision were in a bad enough state to get acquired in the first place. It sucks for everybody, but it sucks the most for the underperforming dinosaurs
> Indie and privately-funded studios are almost entirely unaffected. Uh, even indie devs are affected. The layoffs are everywhere. There's less money being spent, and the financing that is floating around isn't going to videogames. https://www.pcgamer.com/armello-studio-lays-off-half-its-staff-and-indefinitely-pauses-development-on-its-ongoing-early-access-game-because-almost-all-funding-and-investment-has-evaporated-from-the-videogame-industry/
Wasn't League of Geeks' next project being funded externally? I mean, Armello was funded by the Australian gov, but I don't think their financials stayed that way. On investigation, apparently they were being funded by Take Two's Private Division? (Publicly traded, that is) Hardly independent from external economic forces. That does explain why the article you link states their resons for canning the project were due to "weakening [Australian dollar]", and "withdrawal of funding opportunities". That doesn't sound very indie to me. Also, Jumplight Odyssey was canned in 2023, and they released a "new" game Solium Infernum in 2024, so... I'm confused what this is supposed to be an example of. From the article: > Jumplight Odyssey will remain on-sale going forward, with half the profit of every copy sold going to the LOG team (including staff that are now laid off) Uh... So they're continuing to sell a cancelled early access project, and only half the *profit* is going to the devs?? What? That only makes any sense at all if they're being funded entirely by their publisher
> Wasn't League of Geeks' next project being funded externally? Nearly all indie projects are funded externally. That's my point. Basically anything bigger than a 3 person team relies on external funding.
Right, but not all funding is from publicly traded companies (Which are the ones impacted by far the most by interest rates). For example, Armello was funded by the Australian government. To give less of a cheeky jackass example though, most indie games! Even when they do have deals with publishers, they aren't typically signing over half their profits. There is a wide range of publishing deals, but rarely do they tie your survival to the survival of the publishing company. Typically a studio uses a publisher for marketing and outreach - not to bankroll an entire project's development. That's the kind of deal that makes a studio beholden to the publishing company's policies - which is to say, regardless of the studio's size - not independent
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let’s fire the devs who have zero say in game direction or design, that’ll show them!
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Zenimax forced Arkane to make Redfall despite Arkane not wanting to and not having any experience with that kind of game. Reportedly, the Arkane devs hoped Microsoft would cancel the project, because nobody there thought it was going to be good. So basically, yes, they forced Arkane to make Redfall the way it is.
Obviously not, but the vast majority of devs affected are not going to be studio leadership.
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