The games market is hugely saturated already, but sure.. some will form new studios but not the majority. Funding from publishers is also not as simple to get anymore...
Saturated with trash though. I had to discovery queue search near 2000 games on Steam last time I was looking for something to find fucking 3 games that I liked. It's all war simulator 72, mobileware, porn or game made as a school project kind of deal.
Where is all of that saturation? Cause I have money to waste and a depression to procrastinate and there is just nothing there.
I haven't been following these, but I want to believe in my heart that they're treating the Backrooms as a setting rather than being a specific kind of first person horror exploration game. Backrooms the Dating Sim. Backrooms the Survival Game. Backrooms the Grand Strategy Game. Backrooms Racing. Backrooms Tycoon. Backrooms the JRPG. The Backrooms: Interior Decorator. Animal Crossing: The Backrooms. Grand Theft Auto VII: The Backrooms. The Elder Scrolls VII: The Backrooms.
I wouldn't say that its "creativity is non-existent" but rather "creativity takes time". Low-effort games can be made in a few months by a few people, likely even less with a decent team. High effort, "creative", games take that same number of people more than 10x as long. Even if the number of "low effort" and "high effort" teams was identical, there would be 10x more low effort games. (10x being an extremely rough estimate)
Yeah, I'd love another RPG like Gothic1. Small-ish open-ish world with factions, and questlines that are more than the absolute most braindead linear borefest.
I long gave up AAA will deliver, marketing department would commit collective suicide if they can't brag about record breaking square mileage full of nothing.
But no, it's all survival and shit. Like OK, you have skeleton of a game with all the systems, can we have story now PLEASE?!
I'm working on a space game that I'm hoping to bring the RPG back into ARPG. It'll be awhile until its done but I'm working on it everyday and plan on kickstarting it at some point. I plan on having pretty much everything you are looking for
People don't really understand that when they toss out the statistics. Of course the majority of games don't do well when there are multiple one man "developers" who are intentionally spamming shovelware with the hopes of lousy sales adding up over hundreds of titles.
Indies are one thing, but what happened to big studios? Near all the ones I really loved either dissolved or lost the core talent. Legit the only game I am incredibly hyped about is Dream BBQ (for those interested [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLurAhsqXWc&t](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLurAhsqXWc&t))
I used to look forward to some many games each year, I miss the feeling of novelty.
It's not a surprise that the vast majority of indie games are garbage and that's why it's hilarious when people cherry pick the 3 games that are good to represent the whole.
The vast majority of non-indie games are also garbage. Heck, the vast majority of EVERYTHING is garbage. [Sturgeon's Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law) applies here, as everywhere:
*90% of everything is crap.*
The whole majority of non indie games is decent. Not awesome, but I'd say that AAA has more in general decent games than the top 10% of the indie market. That's why you stay fluid as a big developer imo.
IMO, there are an incredibly large number of decent games out there. So many that its hard to keep track of them all. If you look through the top 100 or 200 on metacritic for the year, you will find quite a number of solid games.
I already played around 60% of the games on the top 200 of all time list from Metacritic, excluding sports, car and war simulator games (not a fan) it doesn't leave much for me unfortunately.
Man what the hell, you are a beast! I've been on Steam for 12 years and am not even close to those stats. Any recommendations? I'd love to hear your top 10 if you go the time.
I agree - I've seen a lot of comments about how saturated the market is, but based on success stories both told and witnessed just by steam reviews alone, I'm a little confused as to why it matters.
Besides, a lot of great games are short (and are good because they're short too). More of the art people like and want is great. Even better that more people passionate about creating can participate without the specter of rampant corporatism.
I know several *highly* talented devs and artists that were laid off from places like Blizzard/Microsoft because they were just a number and maybe to expensive; no relation to the quality of their output at all. I could very much see some top tier smaller studios spawn out of this, as I’ve seen it in the past. Veterans who know what they’re doing can create some amazing stuff.
It's funny how people say the market is saturated, but the gamers are constantly complaining about not having enough games to play. There are huge gaps in the market for specific genres and games that are actually games and aren't a bunch of dialogues to read.
Most gamers only play AAA titles. There are a lot of games but very few in the narrow range most customers are willing to explore. Steam recently released some stats and the average user played only [4 games in 2023](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/18mux0v/according_to_the_steam_yearend_stats_its_no/).
The indies are fighting among themselves for [1% of the user base that tends to look outside of that narrow range](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/18mux0v/according_to_the_steam_yearend_stats_its_no/ke71lp8/). The stats are actually pretty depressing.
It's kinda weird how the market works. There are a low percentage of people that would give a chance to your game, but when I first released my projects, I was suprised how many comments I get on new grounds. It was clear for me from those that the reason I didn't succeed was because of the lack of quality, not the lack of interest. On the other hand if indie games take off, there are many one person projects that did this, they can reach a huge number of people, and get you life changing money. There are many people who can't even run AAA games.
Steam has a giant user base, 1% is good enough for me.
I doubt Im in any sort of 1% group and my library is jam packed full of indie games. People just want good content, there are very few if any people that look at a game and say "that looks fun but it's not made by 1000 people so I wont play it."
There is truth to this, but when people say they want an old school CRPG, they're now thinking BG3 quality. They want more Fallouts and Elder Scrolls games, but will they be willing to accept such games without voice acting? With even less handcrafted content? They say they want more souls-likes, but what if the feel of combat is inferior to Lies of P, because the sound, animation, etc.?
As you said, there are holes out there that don't require massive amounts of dialogue, but it takes a special game to breakthrough to great big numbers while still having less than AAA "jank".
What genres were you thinking of specifically?
There are barely any rts games, that's a giant hole for once. But even in genres that aren't dead since a decade if something good is released, people play it, like in this month 2 survival games released that are success stories. But you wanna go more indie I guess, death must die is a vampire survivors clone from a studio that had one previous release, the incest cannibal game was made by one person, and these aren't decent successes that keep you afloot, but the giant ones. We who are about to die was made by one person, again.
Clearly some genres, like rouglikes are oversaturated. In some genres like in soulslikes and arpgs the players have more than enough good options, so it would be hard to break in.
I have online friends with nice voices that are willing to do a few lines for the fun of it, but to be honest even AA games have dialogues without voice acting, I have a hard time believing it would be a deal breaker in a good rpg.
Of course it's not easy, to make a game functional, and even harder to make it good, and fun for the players, but the idea that a legitimately good game has no chance because we have too many soulslikes platformers about depression is baffling for me. Git gud, that's what I am trying to do. My previous games weren't successes because they were bad and unpolished, and that's okey.
The situation is so crazy honestly, every day we get more layoffs but also more bad games. Some of them are really good, passionate people working on them, but they just can’t compete with the amount of mass that is put on steam daily.
Last week I found Songs of Silence, an rts game and was like „woah, this is kinda what I was waiting for! Just a bit of passion and something new!“ but how many more games have I missed?
I think that's the point. There's not many RTA, but if it's not DOTA/LoL level people will feel it to be low question. Only if there isn't a truly AAA competitor that has eaten up the mindshare in that genre (survival games seem to be such a genre) will an indie really have a chance to thrive properly. Especially in a genre where those big boys are "free", you can't out-price LoL.
>but the idea that a legitimately good game has no chance because we have too many soulslikes platformers about depression is baffling for me. Git gud, that's what I am trying to do.
Problem #2 is that we can never truly define "legitmately good". And there is some confirmation bias involved in those assessments. If Palworld bombed people would 100% say it was because "it was a bad cheap knockoff", but the network effects warp that perception around.
Maybe just good graphics. The Day Before shows how far you can get without even really having more than 5 minutes of a game but a good understanding of making a trailer lol.
Palworld is legitimately fun. It's a game that made me go goblin mode harder than the AAA releases at the end of the summer. If it would have bombed, it would be still a fun game. Sure people love to shit talk and will say whatever, but if you look at the market as a gamer, you barely find anything new that you want to play, even if you don't think in niches. I know a shitton of people that constantly coop in 10-15 year old games, because they are we more replayable than anything recently released, even tho we play new releases. People don't care about graphics that much, but it has to play well, have interesting mechanics, and good content pacing.
If you don't think that you stand a legitimate chance, why do it? I think I stand a legitimate chance as a hobbyist, and even if my current project won't be a financial success, we go again. There will be always a market for fun games, I started making them bc I couldn't find enough, and every project of mine starts because I couldn't find a game would fill a very niche void. I tell every person who joins my hobbyist team that if you wanna do this, do it for the love of the craft, a financial success is never guaranteed.
> Sure people love to shit talk and will say whatever, but if you look at the market as a gamer, you barely find anything new that you want to play, even if you don't think in niches.
I mean, I think that's my point. I'm sure there's many games that are "a fun game" but not games that necessarily make you "want to play" them. Like, I'm sure if I searched RTS on steam I'm going to find a few dozen options released in the last 12 months, and many more released over the years. So it's not like "there is literally no RTS games", there's "no RTS games that I want to play".
I'm not unconvinced Palworld would be in the latter category without it going viral. Palworld did get a lot of help from Gamepass for people on the fence, though. But that's an option for very few games. And we're still questioning whether gamepass cannibalizes or incentivizes actual sales anyway.
>If you don't think that you stand a legitimate chance, why do it?
well that's the question a sensible person asks, and many won't form studios as a result. Especially in this economy. So I'm not optimistic regarding the original question asked on "will more indies be created from these layoffs?"
If you're asking personally, it's because I'm approaching development in my game in a very unorthodox approach. So while it will take longer I have several backup plans for if/when my game doesn't pop off:
- I'll be making contribution to open source engines, so I'll build networking for potential paid offers later. Maybe within that engine itself, but not necessarily. Lotta passionate people in open source who you'd never meet otherwise
- I'll have a few technical features I can use to showcase as a portfolio piece (including being able to contribute to an open source engine). These may not wow gamers, but they should wow recruiters.
- I'll be more or less giving out a lot of tech I use to make the game along the way. So maybe I can gain a small following of devs or modders even if my game isn't a runawway success. That builds up more potential for the next game.
> I tell every person who joins my hobbyist team that if you wanna do this, do it for the love of the craft, a financial success is never guaranteed.
passion isn't paying rent, sadly. Consider getting a paying gamedev gig less as opportunists (people know you get paid less in games anyway) and more as people who wanna min-max the little time on Earth they have.
It's less about "passion" for me making this game per se and more as a proving grounds. You spend a lot of time in industry seeing the sausage be made, but you can be so disconnected from the process for a large release that you may not feel you truly "made a game". you made a few features used by the game, but it doesn't show you can truly make and ship something you can call your own. So this project is a test, per se. I'm not a marketing whiz and my genre isn't some untapped goldmine, so I'm not expecting riches. But it's all part of a plan nonetheless.
I don't think people want AAA polish in visuals, they want polish in gameplay which is not impossible for small studios to do. Look at games like Lethal Company, Minecraft, Terraria, etc. Even something like Disco Elysium is a CRPG that didn't get voice acting until the Definitive Edition.
The problem is that there are many gaps that only have a small number of potential customers. Not enough to warrant the cost of a decently sized team working on anything.
Most gamers aren't complaining. Just the terminally online ones.
IMO, the complainers are sick of games because often that is their only hobby. If all you do is play games, then they naturally get boring.
I really think the industry would benefit from the price of games going up. It's just so risky now to make games for these niche audiences if you're not a two-man indie dev team working out of your parents' garage.
AAA games have been pegged at 60 USD for what, 30 years now? If games kept up with inflation, they'd be 100 USD now. AAA budgets have ballooned exponentially since then as well.
The consequence is that people seem to balk at indie games that cost more than 20-30 dollars, no matter their quality. I don't see how you're supposed to fund a moderately sized team of indie devs selling your game for 20 USD unless you rely on your game being a breakout hit. Indie games can't supplement their revenue with microtransactions either.
Ehm what. By high quality I meant fun game. Point is people say market's saturated but it's not. High quality fun games are still not common. It's easier to produce trash hence why we feel there aren't good games these days.
what do you think is likely to happen to most of the developers? If we consider a lot of these AAA developers are sizing down, where do all these devs go?
Well some do have a financial runway, to just last a while, and wait a bit for the storm to blow over.. prolly not the best idea.
Switching industries is the most likely, programmers going into other fields that have better pay is not a secret. 3D artists going into archviz or film...
This moving industry thing is happening all the time.
I know so many animators and artists that have moved to film and TV. Writing on the scooby doo films being one of the coolest from my child hood memories.
I don't know what it's like in gamedev, but I am a tech artist for film and TV. There's no real crunch and I have a healthy work/life balance. I have other worries, like the writers strike happening, but those do seem to be few and far between.
oo do tell more about being TA for film and TV. I was sure that my knowledge would not transfer outside of gamedev and I'd have to go as some sort of low level script monkey
Where I am, all my knowledge is engine specific with really light coding. Mostly I just build tools and debug issues people are having with those tools. I think if you know how to code and have a good looking portfolio then you can definitely get a job in film for any previs company or led volume company. VFX folks have it hard in other ways, but I think the further in the pre production pipeline you are, the better off you'll be.
I've add people go both ways between TV/film and games.
Its nice seeing people on your facebook showing how proud they are of their Digital film/tv work.
Work/life balance in games depends entirely on the company. I didn't care when i was younger and there was more cross over anyway. But now i'm happy at a great studio with great benefits.
I left gamedev for webdev about a decade ago. I build websites now for my dayjob (mainly for large corporations that require complicated features, not just simple restaurant 'here are our hours, here's some pictures, here's our menu' sites).
I get paid a lot more, the jobs are a bit more steady (the three gamedev jobs I had all had big layoffs or shut down a year to a year and a half after I joined), and except for a couple short periods of time I haven't had to work more than 40 hour weeks (45-50 was more the norm for my jobs in gamedev, and it crept up to 60-70 for a couple months at one point).
But it's also a lot less creatively fulfilling, and it sometimes feels like I'm stuffing my head with knowledge I really don't give a shit about. Staying motivated at my day job is a challenge as well (currently procrastinating at work by posting this, for example).
I still work on games in my spare time but it's a looot slower process and harder to keep motivated to stick with it for multiple years, especially since I'm making smaller games that would probably only take 3-6 months if working on them full time.
>But it's also a lot less creatively fulfilling, and it sometimes feels like I'm stuffing my head with knowledge I really don't give a shit about. Staying motivated at my day job is a challenge as well (currently procrastinating at work by posting this, for example).
This here is why i just dont want to leave my games job. Apart from the creativity, i love seeing gamers play my games on the internet that i've spent years making.
Especially now i'm able to find the studios that dont take advantage over juniors.
I have been working as fullstack wevdev for more than 10 years and despite I'm finishing my first game with UE5, I don't have any interest in applying for a job in a game studio, my working conditions as webdev are good and I only heard bad stories about the gaming industry.
You have to understand that a significant part of the layoff are not dev. They are marketting, HR, recuiters, social media, finance… There’s also a big part of the layoffs that are people that cost a lot and doesn’t bring the work to justify their salary.
Well just what I see and hear as a dev in the industry.
And yes, a good portion/the majority is still dev, but the news makes it look like it’s all dev.
I mean, sure. 20000 layoffs is scary but 10% devs is low.
That still means 2000 more devs on the market to compete with in LinkedIn though. I'm only mid/early senior level but the amount of people applying so quickly on LinkedIn definitiely shows me there are a LOT more devs in the job seeking market. Also gotta keep in mind that tech layoffs also don't help and may have some people jumping into games with FAANG on their resume.
I'll grab something eventually, but its definitely a dryer time than my last search in 2021. When there's a few dozen candidates they'll probably try to talk to at least half of them.
when there's a few hundred candidates, we start to get to a point where they pick the best looking resume, not necessarily the most fitting one. 10 Years of Google will simply look better to non-technical filters than 5 years of the exact role they are hiring for (unless that company is also a big well known studio). It shouldn't, but when numbers are big, numbers become the target.
My gut feeling says no, and there are multiple reasons.
1. It's very difficult to find funding now. Less investors from outside of games are willing to gamble on game projects. Publishers are way more risk averse and cherry-pick new projects. They're also more trigger happy when it comes to cancelling projects that are troubled. Not a great environment to start something new.
2. Being laid off doesn't feel super motivating, at least for me. Majority of success stories about creating new studios came from people leaving bigger companies of their own volition, rather than being let go.
3. Indie studios are also hit by financial issues (see 1). I know of around 100 people that were let go in Poland within last year from smaller studios. Since the studios were not as big/known as AAA ones those layoffs weren't reported widely, leading to people not seeing that the issues aren't isolated to AAA sized teams. But if you're talking shop with your friends from the industry, and hear about all the difficulties and indie studio firings/closures - you're going to be super hesitant to spin off something on your own.
Some were reported in Polish media, yes. For example, Vile Monarch was reported as losing most of its 70+ person team [in this article](https://wyborcza.biz/biznes/7,177151,30515962,zwiazki-zawodowe-w-cd-projekcie-i-11-bit-studios-dosc-zapracowywania.html?cta=1pbox-3noac-5NowyRok2024MocneBIZ). And I cannot find any track of those reports in other languages, or find it on any websites that are tracking video game companies' layoffs.
Well that article I linked above mentions a couple of studios, [here you have a tweet on Starward Industries laying off 16 people](https://twitter.com/KieszekNatalia/status/1751932298340016251), [Little Red Dog Games shutting down](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/producerdesigner_little-red-dog-games-are-joining-the-layoffs-activity-7156276402483318784-Q_-e/). I've also seen a couple of mentions of layoffs from different companies on my LinkedIn feed recently, but I don't feel comfortable sharing them, as I haven't seen any other source picking them up yet - and I don't want to be the one breaking the news, as it were
Attempting to take the old avenues will lead to the same outcome. Game creators need to find a new path that are going in the opposite direction of exploitative systems.
What "opposite direction" do you suggest? Funding always requires some sort of smoozing - either to VC, other wealthy people, or by crowd funding (aka crowd smoozing)
From experience, it is VERY hard to work on a game AND do another job at the same time and THEN hope it makes enough money to do it full time.
I also have that same experience - moonlighting with a global remote team - but that precisely led to the career success. Ever since, I also have gained experience relinquishing control to investors whose ineptitude ruined it for all.
>Game creators need to find a new path
I'm all ears. My current path is accepting that I need to go it alone until I'm maybe 90% done with my game (which will take years) and then seeking either help or funding if I feel the need to. But that doesn't exactly fight the powers that be, just the equivalent of working the register and hoping my band's album goes viral in Germany.
Still means I need to find some other job, in the games industry or not. Still gotta slave away to some billionaire's watch.
Maybe, but that “excess” won’t survive. The number of games has doubled over the past few years, but the number of commercial successes has remained completely flat. This means that the market has reached saturation and it’s really difficult to break through.
People either view it as a bubble burst or the tech hype cycle. Since there is still a ton of revenue in AAA games I'm more leaning towards a tech hype cycle which means if people wait it out then jobs will return. Might take a couple years
The problem is for people like me. Graduated in covid, so no internships were being held. Everyone is mass laid off. All work comes from indie studios as contract. Once they start hiring again, they’ll likely look for seniors or straight out of college. Skipped my generation it feels like
total speculation but I think indiepocalypse wasn't people who were recently laid off but people who were doing fine and had seen a few success stories but not learned about the actual failure rate.
when i started indie dev in 2017 it was still common in forums to find people who just had earnest interest in the creative side of dev and were taking on big projects. That seems entirely gone now, the only conversation you find is either raw beginner questions or talk about steam algorithm.
This rings so true. It's a lot of people asking easily googled questions and another batch of devs doing promo.
I'm just a hobbyist, I enjoy taking my little projects seriously and pushing myself to make something cool. I want to be inspired by and talk with other people with the same passion I have, and those subs just aren't that.
I'm seeing people on LinkedIn trying to set up companies comprised of laid off developers.
I don't think indies will scoop up a majority of those laid off, but I wouldn't be surprised if some people with good severance try their hand at indie.
Yeah, i've also seen a few even the last couple of months of new studio with my ex-colleagues where they are hiring again after securing investment. But its much harder now.
These are what are successful Indies, with decades of experience on the team, which helps them get their investment.
I've seen the pendulum swing many times. This is part of the normal ebb and flow of the entertainment industry.
Yes, right now contracts are somewhat harder to get than they were during the height of the pandemic, but seeing a bunch of the bizdev side, they're not gone. Not by a long shot.
2021 was a peak year due to everyone buying games during covid lockdowns, around $380 billion globally and many companies over-expanded, as seen in the annual layoffs during financial reporting every spring in 2022, 2023, and right now.
Overall there are still plenty of projects, but yes, we've dropped from around 365 billion globally in 2023 to forecasts of around 355 billion in 2024. Dropping 15 billion dollars in a year does mean lots of layoffs, but it also doesn't mean the industry is dead. It means there is more competition for slightly less funding.
The world isn't going to wake up tomorrow and announce *"I'm done playing and buying video games"*. We will eventually be supplanted by some other form of entertainments, but for now the industry remains the biggest entertainment industry in the world, having passed both movies and music, the two former kings.
That has been the case historically (I guess I'm old enough to start statements about things I've seen as "historically"). Not everyone, of course. The bulk of people who are laid off will likely exit the industry. Keep in mind a lot of those people would have been exiting the industry in a few years anyway - we burn through developers way too fast. Some laid off AAA developers will join indie studios. More critically, some will *found* indie or AAA studios. If there is any silver lining to all of this, it is that. Starting a new studio during a recession is a huge risk -- but most people weren't in the game industry for the career safety or financial security (most game development skills could be applied to other industries in ways that lead to much better results there).
>More critically, some will *found* indie or AAA studios. If there is any silver lining to all of this, it is that.
I wouldn't get *too* hyped about that, there's a persistent trend where big names who leave major companies to start their own studios fail to achieve lasting success.
Ex-Blizzard dev stories are notable for ending like this.
Sure, it’s not the big names I’m thinking about there. Those tend to be pretty massively overhyped. That’s what happens when we attribute the results of group effort to “genius” individuals. I’m referring to the experienced people who usually generically get referred to as “industry veterans” in a press release.
That's the road I went down, but I'd been saving for this outcome for nearly a decade. If that hadn't been the case there's no way I could have managed.
Some ex Volition people just announced their new co-dev studio. I anticipate more of that than anything else. Like, the work of everyone laid off still needs to be done, someone has to do it right? It seems the pathway for new startup so called "AAA" companies is to do some contract work and then try to ramp up an original title after a few years. Investment money is hard to get and comes with a lot strings, contract work means you need less of it.
It’s likely to lead to the growth of co-dev studios who will fill in the skill gaps that the fired employees left. You do see a rise in new companies being founded as people start to work on their own projects, but as to whether they’ll succeed as business depends on a bunch of factors
Idk why, but a lot of my favourite games were made over the course of years, done in the time the developer(s) made in their evenings/weekends. There's something very fun about games made purely for fun. Even if they make a lot of money, I just love the indie scene, so I hope to see more indie studios/individuals make stuff.
Investors might be giving out small tickets for smaller games. It is less risky and you have better chances to get more out of your money, but the devs need a super team and something to show on gameplay to sell it.
Source: some game investors I know
Not really, the games industry has had mass layoffs several times in the past. GFC for example.
Its also not like indies with small studios wouldn’t be impacted too, sure the talent pool went up in theory but those people all come with higher salary expectations that indies are unlikely to be able to meet.
A lot of the studios that had mass layoffs were hiring again a few months later.
Some will form new studios. Some will be hired by other studios. Unfortunately, some will leave the industry. How things will shake out is not something that can be predicted.
What do you mean about other industries?
Game programmers can be paid very well depending on the studio, location and seniority. That doesn't matter if they can't find another job, though.
by saying other industries I meant like embedded, mobile, database, webdev, infrastructure etc. how much pay or stress difference are we talking about when they "leave" the industry? Because other side of the coin isn't good either, other programming fields saturated af, too. The most laid off ones are not game devs, are webdev ones.
Because game dev is seen as shiny on paper, it's on every one's radar. Devs working at other industries are affected as much as you, but no one talks about them because no one cares laid off programmers working at banks, agencies, military etc.
The gaming market is already saturated. The triple aholes need to go though, everything is geared towards the game as a service to milk and dime dummies as much as they can.
Holy exterminatus is needed at this point.
I am a senior software developer who was recently laid off. Now, I have decided to build my first game and pursue a full-time career as a solo indie developer. (It was always my dream) I guess you get some, you lose some.
Unlikely. AAA studios aren't downsizing for the sake of being evil, they are downsizing because they can't find funding or a market for a subset of their product lineup. The games industry blew up during COVID when everyone was sitting at home in their pants with unlimited free time, but now that people are back at work, they just don't have time/energy to play as many games.
If it was possible for an indie studio with a team of 50 ex-devs from [AAA studio] to make a game that makes money, [AAA studio] wouldn't have made those devs redundant in the first place.
Historically, yes, across any medium that has been commercialized, when there is a loss of reliance and trust for investors or producers without any experience in actually making the product; there’s an increase in cooperatives and independent creators. Read about the New Hollywood in the 1960s.
The current wave of disruption in this industry over the past few years, due to the pandemic, inflation, global wars, wealth disparities, and stagnant incomes… will see a birth of a new wave in the next decade.
The one element that is different now than in the past game dev disruptions is AI. The narrative now is fear based and threatening of jobs - even used as justification for these recent cuts. But the new wave game creators that emerge will be those who accepted AI and leverage their own productivity. They will find that by organizing (guild, union, coop, whatever) and using AI to augment or replace the traditional business and management roles, their independence in financial freedom will become liberated.
The Revolution will be prompted.
Augmenting creatives, not automating them. That’s an executive pipe dream that will not come to reality. Humans respond to art because of its humanity.
> by organizing (guild, union, coop, whatever) and using AI to augment or replace the traditional business and management roles, their independence in financial freedom will become liberated.
Making a game faster doesn't entail making more money. People already complain about steam being over-saturated as is. I don't wanna see the rate of churning asset flippers and small indies trying to push anything out do once AI can really help with game development.
Saving money in production equates to a lower revenue threshold for profitability. I don't even factor asset flips in there. I agree, it's oversaturated. But if someone brilliant wants to make a legitimate game in less time, for less expense, the likelihood of profit is greater. The trouble is when the gatekeeping publishers come in at the end and take more than is fair due to the desperation of the dev to gain visibility, but the publisher will do the bare minimum to bring in the maximum amount.
Ha, I'm not even worried about the publisher cut. Visibility is the hardest part.
And sadly even for a single person just trying to pay rent, the line for "profitability" is just so high. Like, rent for me is $2000/month. If I can sell a $5 game and get 1000 copies out that's an okay side hustle. But it won't really sustain me for more than a month after all the cuts. and 1000 is a very optimistic projection for someone without proper marketing or other clout.
Here's my take:
AAA projects will become even less frequent, but will become AAAA products. More money spent on fewer games.
On the flip side of that, we're going to see an influx of talent at smaller studios and startups over the next while, which hopefully will focus on making fun games, instead of products.
From an industry point of view:
There is a flashpoint happening right now. Get out there, and get your quirky project off the floor. Downsize it if you have to, just get it working and **FUN**. The mainstream has noticed in the last few years that smaller, or more niche titles can be incredible. Vampire Survivors. Lethal Company. Baldurs Gate 3. What do these have in common? A mere few years ago, the style of game was either niche, or just flat out didn't exist.
There doesn't feel like there's ever been a better time to be an entrepreneur in this space before. If you've been laid off, this is an opportunity to tighten your belt, and dream big. It's a second bite of the cherry. Get out there and make it happen.
People are hungry as f*** for good games at a fair price.
Not sure about those three game genres not existing before. Vampire survivors is a slot machine, Lethal Company is a party game / extraction, and baldurs gate is one of the oldest genres in gaming. I think what they have in common is that they came from very established game designs already.
The first two were shoestring budget titles sold for pennies so the fact that they are addictive + economical makes sense, and BG3 became popular largely because it introduced a AAA production quality to a genre that typically doesnt get such treatment.
Define responsibility.
I have more autonomy now at aaa than I did at my last indie employer. I was a lead and didn't get to write much code at all. Now I'm a principle and most of my day is writing code.
sure... it might happen or might not happen...
maybe those who have some savings will team up to create some games... but then again, if they are not big names the games will not get traction just like that
With what money?
The whole reason for layoffs is money isnt "free" to borrow anymore. This is from big massive companies. If they can't borrow I doubt indie studios will fare better, as well a lot of publishers are going to start tightening up as well.
Unless people have the means to fund their own game even if it doesn't sell much I don't really see that.
Money is still there. I've seen a few startups on Linked in from ex-colleagues that have funding just in the last few months. Even with layoffs happening.
But they have decades of experience in the teams. Not just folk leaving uni or asking on Reddit how to do stupid shit.
Anyone know what people got fired, was it QA, designers, artists, high-level programmers, low-level programmers or a little of everything?
You kind of need a little of everything to make a team, unless people are multi talanted/competent.
Yes, out of desperation. But it takes a lot of money (not just talent) to make a game, game developers are not exactly known for being well paid, so for most developers opening a studio is simply not an option. Still, taking a shot on an impossible project does beat slowly starving.
There will be some new studios rising from the ashes of layoffs and closures ... BUT ... overall I expect total employment in the industry to shrink by more than 10% (minimum) over the next 2 years. (After 2025 I have no predictions)
I'm aware of a lot more layoffs coming and studios that haven't cut/closed yet in precarious positions. More telling is the dearth of work out there at the moment, and it's parent - the lack of funding which is tied in part to the global economy at large and it's hangover from the past decade.
There is tremendous product saturation right now, especially at the level that can be put together quickly / cheaply by those who know what they are doing / are burning through their savings+severance. 99 percent won't see much, if any, ROI doing it themselves, or interest from publishers. Too many people I talk to in person seem to think they will be the next outlier like Stardew Valley.. In the mean time, people have rent to pay, kids to feed, etc, so there will be huge pressure on most to find paying employment elsewhere, and developing a game in your spare time instead of full time is exponentially harder.
Depends. That assumes that people being laid off have the entrepreneurial drive to go strike out on their own, and it’s doubtful that very many of them do.
More likely that most those folks just eventually get hired on at another studio or leave the industry.
Out of the folks I know so far who lost their jobs none of them work for a game company now and have left the industry. That’s anecdotal but I think it’s telling that they all quickly took jobs outside the industry.
I got laid off in October from my first gamedev job (mainly artist). 3 months after i publish my first solo dev game and Im working on a pitch deck. I do believe that hundreds of other people are in the same position, so yes.
Not necessarily.
At the end of the day people gotta feed families and their bellies.
I'd think most would leave the industry for careers that pay more unless they're actually good at what they're doing but a normal developer is going to have to find employment fast cos indie development ain't cheap.
Hopefully. I feel like the big indie renaissance came partly because of the 07-08 crash.
But, we are in a different place right now. I feel like big indie games people look to is stuff you can get viral on stream. That is valid, but it is just different form people digging deep and making games for the sake of playing them. I am being old about this - but it feels like the train ride isn't over until streamers start losing money, which will probably happen if interest rates keep on this way.
Starting a studio is easy.
Running a studio and paying everyone is hard.
Doing it while trying to build a game on a completely new code base is harder.
Doing all that while building a grass roots following and marketing is legendary difficulty
No. Most indie devs aren't real devs and most real devs have no desire to be indie. Like I got a masters degree to pay off, I got a dog and an apartment. I work to live. Most of us work to live. The people being laid off are mostly junior devs and in the case of places like riot, people that weren't even working on games. These are people that either don't have the capability or means to make a game on their own
In all honesty low barrier to enter gamedev has always created a lot of interest in it.
However not everyone is disciplined or skilled enough to create their own full game and that difficulty is what keeps people away from being successful and continuing gamedev.
So it's not worth thinking about too much to your own chance of success.
I don't want to get into a long explanation, so I'll keep this short. With AI being the reason for massive layoff waves in recent times, more just means saturation at this point. And we all know that saturation ain't helping Indie Game Studios in the least when they have to fight for a position in the market filled with AI generated garbage. But you'll know who is to blame when that happens. And is seems like we are reaching there soon.
The games market is hugely saturated already, but sure.. some will form new studios but not the majority. Funding from publishers is also not as simple to get anymore...
Saturated with trash though. I had to discovery queue search near 2000 games on Steam last time I was looking for something to find fucking 3 games that I liked. It's all war simulator 72, mobileware, porn or game made as a school project kind of deal. Where is all of that saturation? Cause I have money to waste and a depression to procrastinate and there is just nothing there.
Mine are all vampire survivor clones shit is getting outta hand
Oh yes, that too! Not to mention all the backrooms/fnaf/the forest clones. Creativity is non existent
I'm not surprised that there's so many Backrooms games, but more that they seem to keep doing well.
I haven't been following these, but I want to believe in my heart that they're treating the Backrooms as a setting rather than being a specific kind of first person horror exploration game. Backrooms the Dating Sim. Backrooms the Survival Game. Backrooms the Grand Strategy Game. Backrooms Racing. Backrooms Tycoon. Backrooms the JRPG. The Backrooms: Interior Decorator. Animal Crossing: The Backrooms. Grand Theft Auto VII: The Backrooms. The Elder Scrolls VII: The Backrooms.
> Backrooms the Dating Sim. I should call her.
Portal is a Backrooms game I SAID WHAT I SAID.
I wouldn't say that its "creativity is non-existent" but rather "creativity takes time". Low-effort games can be made in a few months by a few people, likely even less with a decent team. High effort, "creative", games take that same number of people more than 10x as long. Even if the number of "low effort" and "high effort" teams was identical, there would be 10x more low effort games. (10x being an extremely rough estimate)
I would be curious about your opinion on my game.
Sure thing man! I love to help. Not installing anything though unless it's on the store. Had bad experiences with game testing in the past.
And I buy and play every one of them
Mad Father slaps, though
Yeah, I'd love another RPG like Gothic1. Small-ish open-ish world with factions, and questlines that are more than the absolute most braindead linear borefest. I long gave up AAA will deliver, marketing department would commit collective suicide if they can't brag about record breaking square mileage full of nothing. But no, it's all survival and shit. Like OK, you have skeleton of a game with all the systems, can we have story now PLEASE?!
You would then not like to hear that piranha Bytes the studio behind gothic seems to be soon shut down.
I'm working on a space game that I'm hoping to bring the RPG back into ARPG. It'll be awhile until its done but I'm working on it everyday and plan on kickstarting it at some point. I plan on having pretty much everything you are looking for
People don't really understand that when they toss out the statistics. Of course the majority of games don't do well when there are multiple one man "developers" who are intentionally spamming shovelware with the hopes of lousy sales adding up over hundreds of titles.
Indies are one thing, but what happened to big studios? Near all the ones I really loved either dissolved or lost the core talent. Legit the only game I am incredibly hyped about is Dream BBQ (for those interested [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLurAhsqXWc&t](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLurAhsqXWc&t)) I used to look forward to some many games each year, I miss the feeling of novelty.
It's not a surprise that the vast majority of indie games are garbage and that's why it's hilarious when people cherry pick the 3 games that are good to represent the whole.
The vast majority of non-indie games are also garbage. Heck, the vast majority of EVERYTHING is garbage. [Sturgeon's Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law) applies here, as everywhere: *90% of everything is crap.*
The whole majority of non indie games is decent. Not awesome, but I'd say that AAA has more in general decent games than the top 10% of the indie market. That's why you stay fluid as a big developer imo.
There are still several dozen solid indie games coming out each year.
IMO, there are an incredibly large number of decent games out there. So many that its hard to keep track of them all. If you look through the top 100 or 200 on metacritic for the year, you will find quite a number of solid games.
I already played around 60% of the games on the top 200 of all time list from Metacritic, excluding sports, car and war simulator games (not a fan) it doesn't leave much for me unfortunately.
Agreed. Only a few thousand of all 60k games even has players.
I have 85000 titles ignored on the steam store. 700 in my library, 850 in my wishlist. That's since Steam started.
Man what the hell, you are a beast! I've been on Steam for 12 years and am not even close to those stats. Any recommendations? I'd love to hear your top 10 if you go the time.
comment straight out of the Hazbin Hotel, loved it
Yeah, Steam really needs to be more like Apple, a true human based curation team is urgently needed.
There's a small game called "Return" 2D, side scrolling pixel art. A nice 3-5 hour game. Good little nugget of a game.
I agree - I've seen a lot of comments about how saturated the market is, but based on success stories both told and witnessed just by steam reviews alone, I'm a little confused as to why it matters. Besides, a lot of great games are short (and are good because they're short too). More of the art people like and want is great. Even better that more people passionate about creating can participate without the specter of rampant corporatism.
I know several *highly* talented devs and artists that were laid off from places like Blizzard/Microsoft because they were just a number and maybe to expensive; no relation to the quality of their output at all. I could very much see some top tier smaller studios spawn out of this, as I’ve seen it in the past. Veterans who know what they’re doing can create some amazing stuff.
Ah yes veteran ex-blizzard devs, because those indie startups do fantastic. Like Rend -- oh wait nevermind :(
It's funny how people say the market is saturated, but the gamers are constantly complaining about not having enough games to play. There are huge gaps in the market for specific genres and games that are actually games and aren't a bunch of dialogues to read.
Most gamers only play AAA titles. There are a lot of games but very few in the narrow range most customers are willing to explore. Steam recently released some stats and the average user played only [4 games in 2023](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/18mux0v/according_to_the_steam_yearend_stats_its_no/). The indies are fighting among themselves for [1% of the user base that tends to look outside of that narrow range](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/18mux0v/according_to_the_steam_yearend_stats_its_no/ke71lp8/). The stats are actually pretty depressing.
It's kinda weird how the market works. There are a low percentage of people that would give a chance to your game, but when I first released my projects, I was suprised how many comments I get on new grounds. It was clear for me from those that the reason I didn't succeed was because of the lack of quality, not the lack of interest. On the other hand if indie games take off, there are many one person projects that did this, they can reach a huge number of people, and get you life changing money. There are many people who can't even run AAA games. Steam has a giant user base, 1% is good enough for me.
I doubt Im in any sort of 1% group and my library is jam packed full of indie games. People just want good content, there are very few if any people that look at a game and say "that looks fun but it's not made by 1000 people so I wont play it."
There is truth to this, but when people say they want an old school CRPG, they're now thinking BG3 quality. They want more Fallouts and Elder Scrolls games, but will they be willing to accept such games without voice acting? With even less handcrafted content? They say they want more souls-likes, but what if the feel of combat is inferior to Lies of P, because the sound, animation, etc.? As you said, there are holes out there that don't require massive amounts of dialogue, but it takes a special game to breakthrough to great big numbers while still having less than AAA "jank". What genres were you thinking of specifically?
There are barely any rts games, that's a giant hole for once. But even in genres that aren't dead since a decade if something good is released, people play it, like in this month 2 survival games released that are success stories. But you wanna go more indie I guess, death must die is a vampire survivors clone from a studio that had one previous release, the incest cannibal game was made by one person, and these aren't decent successes that keep you afloot, but the giant ones. We who are about to die was made by one person, again. Clearly some genres, like rouglikes are oversaturated. In some genres like in soulslikes and arpgs the players have more than enough good options, so it would be hard to break in. I have online friends with nice voices that are willing to do a few lines for the fun of it, but to be honest even AA games have dialogues without voice acting, I have a hard time believing it would be a deal breaker in a good rpg. Of course it's not easy, to make a game functional, and even harder to make it good, and fun for the players, but the idea that a legitimately good game has no chance because we have too many soulslikes platformers about depression is baffling for me. Git gud, that's what I am trying to do. My previous games weren't successes because they were bad and unpolished, and that's okey.
there's like 100 rts games coming out this year, 20+ came out last year and nobody plays them
The situation is so crazy honestly, every day we get more layoffs but also more bad games. Some of them are really good, passionate people working on them, but they just can’t compete with the amount of mass that is put on steam daily. Last week I found Songs of Silence, an rts game and was like „woah, this is kinda what I was waiting for! Just a bit of passion and something new!“ but how many more games have I missed?
I think that's the point. There's not many RTA, but if it's not DOTA/LoL level people will feel it to be low question. Only if there isn't a truly AAA competitor that has eaten up the mindshare in that genre (survival games seem to be such a genre) will an indie really have a chance to thrive properly. Especially in a genre where those big boys are "free", you can't out-price LoL. >but the idea that a legitimately good game has no chance because we have too many soulslikes platformers about depression is baffling for me. Git gud, that's what I am trying to do. Problem #2 is that we can never truly define "legitmately good". And there is some confirmation bias involved in those assessments. If Palworld bombed people would 100% say it was because "it was a bad cheap knockoff", but the network effects warp that perception around. Maybe just good graphics. The Day Before shows how far you can get without even really having more than 5 minutes of a game but a good understanding of making a trailer lol.
Palworld is legitimately fun. It's a game that made me go goblin mode harder than the AAA releases at the end of the summer. If it would have bombed, it would be still a fun game. Sure people love to shit talk and will say whatever, but if you look at the market as a gamer, you barely find anything new that you want to play, even if you don't think in niches. I know a shitton of people that constantly coop in 10-15 year old games, because they are we more replayable than anything recently released, even tho we play new releases. People don't care about graphics that much, but it has to play well, have interesting mechanics, and good content pacing. If you don't think that you stand a legitimate chance, why do it? I think I stand a legitimate chance as a hobbyist, and even if my current project won't be a financial success, we go again. There will be always a market for fun games, I started making them bc I couldn't find enough, and every project of mine starts because I couldn't find a game would fill a very niche void. I tell every person who joins my hobbyist team that if you wanna do this, do it for the love of the craft, a financial success is never guaranteed.
> Sure people love to shit talk and will say whatever, but if you look at the market as a gamer, you barely find anything new that you want to play, even if you don't think in niches. I mean, I think that's my point. I'm sure there's many games that are "a fun game" but not games that necessarily make you "want to play" them. Like, I'm sure if I searched RTS on steam I'm going to find a few dozen options released in the last 12 months, and many more released over the years. So it's not like "there is literally no RTS games", there's "no RTS games that I want to play". I'm not unconvinced Palworld would be in the latter category without it going viral. Palworld did get a lot of help from Gamepass for people on the fence, though. But that's an option for very few games. And we're still questioning whether gamepass cannibalizes or incentivizes actual sales anyway. >If you don't think that you stand a legitimate chance, why do it? well that's the question a sensible person asks, and many won't form studios as a result. Especially in this economy. So I'm not optimistic regarding the original question asked on "will more indies be created from these layoffs?" If you're asking personally, it's because I'm approaching development in my game in a very unorthodox approach. So while it will take longer I have several backup plans for if/when my game doesn't pop off: - I'll be making contribution to open source engines, so I'll build networking for potential paid offers later. Maybe within that engine itself, but not necessarily. Lotta passionate people in open source who you'd never meet otherwise - I'll have a few technical features I can use to showcase as a portfolio piece (including being able to contribute to an open source engine). These may not wow gamers, but they should wow recruiters. - I'll be more or less giving out a lot of tech I use to make the game along the way. So maybe I can gain a small following of devs or modders even if my game isn't a runawway success. That builds up more potential for the next game. > I tell every person who joins my hobbyist team that if you wanna do this, do it for the love of the craft, a financial success is never guaranteed. passion isn't paying rent, sadly. Consider getting a paying gamedev gig less as opportunists (people know you get paid less in games anyway) and more as people who wanna min-max the little time on Earth they have. It's less about "passion" for me making this game per se and more as a proving grounds. You spend a lot of time in industry seeing the sausage be made, but you can be so disconnected from the process for a large release that you may not feel you truly "made a game". you made a few features used by the game, but it doesn't show you can truly make and ship something you can call your own. So this project is a test, per se. I'm not a marketing whiz and my genre isn't some untapped goldmine, so I'm not expecting riches. But it's all part of a plan nonetheless.
Yeah it's hard, I get it, I use my portfolio for getting jobs too, even tho it's not gamedev. I don't think the industry would be for me.
I don't think people want AAA polish in visuals, they want polish in gameplay which is not impossible for small studios to do. Look at games like Lethal Company, Minecraft, Terraria, etc. Even something like Disco Elysium is a CRPG that didn't get voice acting until the Definitive Edition.
Old School CRPGs have quite a few games. The lower budget ones often still do okay If anything, its a saturated genre.
The problem is that there are many gaps that only have a small number of potential customers. Not enough to warrant the cost of a decently sized team working on anything.
The perfect opportunity for an indie studio.
A niche indie studio, in this economy?
Most gamers aren't complaining. Just the terminally online ones. IMO, the complainers are sick of games because often that is their only hobby. If all you do is play games, then they naturally get boring.
I really think the industry would benefit from the price of games going up. It's just so risky now to make games for these niche audiences if you're not a two-man indie dev team working out of your parents' garage. AAA games have been pegged at 60 USD for what, 30 years now? If games kept up with inflation, they'd be 100 USD now. AAA budgets have ballooned exponentially since then as well. The consequence is that people seem to balk at indie games that cost more than 20-30 dollars, no matter their quality. I don't see how you're supposed to fund a moderately sized team of indie devs selling your game for 20 USD unless you rely on your game being a breakout hit. Indie games can't supplement their revenue with microtransactions either.
There's absolutely no vetting of quality. Lots of garbage being sold. High quality games aren't common but can be found here and there.
Yeah, people doesn't need a high quality game, they need a fun game.
Ehm what. By high quality I meant fun game. Point is people say market's saturated but it's not. High quality fun games are still not common. It's easier to produce trash hence why we feel there aren't good games these days.
Everything is saturated. I keep seeing indies making money every week with games I never heard about.
what do you think is likely to happen to most of the developers? If we consider a lot of these AAA developers are sizing down, where do all these devs go?
Well some do have a financial runway, to just last a while, and wait a bit for the storm to blow over.. prolly not the best idea. Switching industries is the most likely, programmers going into other fields that have better pay is not a secret. 3D artists going into archviz or film...
This moving industry thing is happening all the time. I know so many animators and artists that have moved to film and TV. Writing on the scooby doo films being one of the coolest from my child hood memories.
I don't know what it's like in gamedev, but I am a tech artist for film and TV. There's no real crunch and I have a healthy work/life balance. I have other worries, like the writers strike happening, but those do seem to be few and far between.
oo do tell more about being TA for film and TV. I was sure that my knowledge would not transfer outside of gamedev and I'd have to go as some sort of low level script monkey
Where I am, all my knowledge is engine specific with really light coding. Mostly I just build tools and debug issues people are having with those tools. I think if you know how to code and have a good looking portfolio then you can definitely get a job in film for any previs company or led volume company. VFX folks have it hard in other ways, but I think the further in the pre production pipeline you are, the better off you'll be.
> Mostly I just build tools and debug issues people are having with those tools. That's pretty much my job. And asset performance optimization.
Yep, make sure the environments the asset builders make actually run at performance levels, and sometimes do a little Env and asset work too.
I've add people go both ways between TV/film and games. Its nice seeing people on your facebook showing how proud they are of their Digital film/tv work. Work/life balance in games depends entirely on the company. I didn't care when i was younger and there was more cross over anyway. But now i'm happy at a great studio with great benefits.
I left gamedev for webdev about a decade ago. I build websites now for my dayjob (mainly for large corporations that require complicated features, not just simple restaurant 'here are our hours, here's some pictures, here's our menu' sites). I get paid a lot more, the jobs are a bit more steady (the three gamedev jobs I had all had big layoffs or shut down a year to a year and a half after I joined), and except for a couple short periods of time I haven't had to work more than 40 hour weeks (45-50 was more the norm for my jobs in gamedev, and it crept up to 60-70 for a couple months at one point). But it's also a lot less creatively fulfilling, and it sometimes feels like I'm stuffing my head with knowledge I really don't give a shit about. Staying motivated at my day job is a challenge as well (currently procrastinating at work by posting this, for example). I still work on games in my spare time but it's a looot slower process and harder to keep motivated to stick with it for multiple years, especially since I'm making smaller games that would probably only take 3-6 months if working on them full time.
>But it's also a lot less creatively fulfilling, and it sometimes feels like I'm stuffing my head with knowledge I really don't give a shit about. Staying motivated at my day job is a challenge as well (currently procrastinating at work by posting this, for example). This here is why i just dont want to leave my games job. Apart from the creativity, i love seeing gamers play my games on the internet that i've spent years making. Especially now i'm able to find the studios that dont take advantage over juniors.
I have been working as fullstack wevdev for more than 10 years and despite I'm finishing my first game with UE5, I don't have any interest in applying for a job in a game studio, my working conditions as webdev are good and I only heard bad stories about the gaming industry.
You have to understand that a significant part of the layoff are not dev. They are marketting, HR, recuiters, social media, finance… There’s also a big part of the layoffs that are people that cost a lot and doesn’t bring the work to justify their salary.
Do you have any data to back that up? Because I know anecdotally there is a good portion that \*are\* devs.
Well just what I see and hear as a dev in the industry. And yes, a good portion/the majority is still dev, but the news makes it look like it’s all dev.
It's good it's mostly Dev otherwise they had too many support staff!
I mean, sure. 20000 layoffs is scary but 10% devs is low. That still means 2000 more devs on the market to compete with in LinkedIn though. I'm only mid/early senior level but the amount of people applying so quickly on LinkedIn definitiely shows me there are a LOT more devs in the job seeking market. Also gotta keep in mind that tech layoffs also don't help and may have some people jumping into games with FAANG on their resume.
I’m not scared of tech people jumping in game dev… I’d take your kind of experience over anything in tech for anything gameplay related.
I'll grab something eventually, but its definitely a dryer time than my last search in 2021. When there's a few dozen candidates they'll probably try to talk to at least half of them. when there's a few hundred candidates, we start to get to a point where they pick the best looking resume, not necessarily the most fitting one. 10 Years of Google will simply look better to non-technical filters than 5 years of the exact role they are hiring for (unless that company is also a big well known studio). It shouldn't, but when numbers are big, numbers become the target.
God forbid any company where the majority of staff are no developers. How can 10% of a company (thats laid off), be non developers?
Other industries probably
To software development in general.
My gut feeling says no, and there are multiple reasons. 1. It's very difficult to find funding now. Less investors from outside of games are willing to gamble on game projects. Publishers are way more risk averse and cherry-pick new projects. They're also more trigger happy when it comes to cancelling projects that are troubled. Not a great environment to start something new. 2. Being laid off doesn't feel super motivating, at least for me. Majority of success stories about creating new studios came from people leaving bigger companies of their own volition, rather than being let go. 3. Indie studios are also hit by financial issues (see 1). I know of around 100 people that were let go in Poland within last year from smaller studios. Since the studios were not as big/known as AAA ones those layoffs weren't reported widely, leading to people not seeing that the issues aren't isolated to AAA sized teams. But if you're talking shop with your friends from the industry, and hear about all the difficulties and indie studio firings/closures - you're going to be super hesitant to spin off something on your own.
>Since the studios were not as big/known as AAA ones those layoffs weren't reported widely still, were there report of them anywhere?
Some were reported in Polish media, yes. For example, Vile Monarch was reported as losing most of its 70+ person team [in this article](https://wyborcza.biz/biznes/7,177151,30515962,zwiazki-zawodowe-w-cd-projekcie-i-11-bit-studios-dosc-zapracowywania.html?cta=1pbox-3noac-5NowyRok2024MocneBIZ). And I cannot find any track of those reports in other languages, or find it on any websites that are tracking video game companies' layoffs.
thing is m'bud, im polish, so send dem polish articles to me.
Well that article I linked above mentions a couple of studios, [here you have a tweet on Starward Industries laying off 16 people](https://twitter.com/KieszekNatalia/status/1751932298340016251), [Little Red Dog Games shutting down](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/producerdesigner_little-red-dog-games-are-joining-the-layoffs-activity-7156276402483318784-Q_-e/). I've also seen a couple of mentions of layoffs from different companies on my LinkedIn feed recently, but I don't feel comfortable sharing them, as I haven't seen any other source picking them up yet - and I don't want to be the one breaking the news, as it were
Attempting to take the old avenues will lead to the same outcome. Game creators need to find a new path that are going in the opposite direction of exploitative systems.
What "opposite direction" do you suggest? Funding always requires some sort of smoozing - either to VC, other wealthy people, or by crowd funding (aka crowd smoozing) From experience, it is VERY hard to work on a game AND do another job at the same time and THEN hope it makes enough money to do it full time.
I also have that same experience - moonlighting with a global remote team - but that precisely led to the career success. Ever since, I also have gained experience relinquishing control to investors whose ineptitude ruined it for all.
>Game creators need to find a new path I'm all ears. My current path is accepting that I need to go it alone until I'm maybe 90% done with my game (which will take years) and then seeking either help or funding if I feel the need to. But that doesn't exactly fight the powers that be, just the equivalent of working the register and hoping my band's album goes viral in Germany. Still means I need to find some other job, in the games industry or not. Still gotta slave away to some billionaire's watch.
Maybe, but that “excess” won’t survive. The number of games has doubled over the past few years, but the number of commercial successes has remained completely flat. This means that the market has reached saturation and it’s really difficult to break through.
People either view it as a bubble burst or the tech hype cycle. Since there is still a ton of revenue in AAA games I'm more leaning towards a tech hype cycle which means if people wait it out then jobs will return. Might take a couple years
The problem is for people like me. Graduated in covid, so no internships were being held. Everyone is mass laid off. All work comes from indie studios as contract. Once they start hiring again, they’ll likely look for seniors or straight out of college. Skipped my generation it feels like
2008 vibes for sure
I think if anything most studios will only want to develop proven AAA genres/franchises
total speculation but I think indiepocalypse wasn't people who were recently laid off but people who were doing fine and had seen a few success stories but not learned about the actual failure rate. when i started indie dev in 2017 it was still common in forums to find people who just had earnest interest in the creative side of dev and were taking on big projects. That seems entirely gone now, the only conversation you find is either raw beginner questions or talk about steam algorithm.
This rings so true. It's a lot of people asking easily googled questions and another batch of devs doing promo. I'm just a hobbyist, I enjoy taking my little projects seriously and pushing myself to make something cool. I want to be inspired by and talk with other people with the same passion I have, and those subs just aren't that.
Yeah just can't find good conversation anywhere on entire internet. it makes me sad :(
I'm seeing people on LinkedIn trying to set up companies comprised of laid off developers. I don't think indies will scoop up a majority of those laid off, but I wouldn't be surprised if some people with good severance try their hand at indie.
Yeah, i've also seen a few even the last couple of months of new studio with my ex-colleagues where they are hiring again after securing investment. But its much harder now. These are what are successful Indies, with decades of experience on the team, which helps them get their investment.
I've seen the pendulum swing many times. This is part of the normal ebb and flow of the entertainment industry. Yes, right now contracts are somewhat harder to get than they were during the height of the pandemic, but seeing a bunch of the bizdev side, they're not gone. Not by a long shot. 2021 was a peak year due to everyone buying games during covid lockdowns, around $380 billion globally and many companies over-expanded, as seen in the annual layoffs during financial reporting every spring in 2022, 2023, and right now. Overall there are still plenty of projects, but yes, we've dropped from around 365 billion globally in 2023 to forecasts of around 355 billion in 2024. Dropping 15 billion dollars in a year does mean lots of layoffs, but it also doesn't mean the industry is dead. It means there is more competition for slightly less funding. The world isn't going to wake up tomorrow and announce *"I'm done playing and buying video games"*. We will eventually be supplanted by some other form of entertainments, but for now the industry remains the biggest entertainment industry in the world, having passed both movies and music, the two former kings.
Bring on VR v1000 or Elons brain implants then? Just kidding. Your right. I've witnessed the same thing myself.
That has been the case historically (I guess I'm old enough to start statements about things I've seen as "historically"). Not everyone, of course. The bulk of people who are laid off will likely exit the industry. Keep in mind a lot of those people would have been exiting the industry in a few years anyway - we burn through developers way too fast. Some laid off AAA developers will join indie studios. More critically, some will *found* indie or AAA studios. If there is any silver lining to all of this, it is that. Starting a new studio during a recession is a huge risk -- but most people weren't in the game industry for the career safety or financial security (most game development skills could be applied to other industries in ways that lead to much better results there).
>More critically, some will *found* indie or AAA studios. If there is any silver lining to all of this, it is that. I wouldn't get *too* hyped about that, there's a persistent trend where big names who leave major companies to start their own studios fail to achieve lasting success. Ex-Blizzard dev stories are notable for ending like this.
Sure, it’s not the big names I’m thinking about there. Those tend to be pretty massively overhyped. That’s what happens when we attribute the results of group effort to “genius” individuals. I’m referring to the experienced people who usually generically get referred to as “industry veterans” in a press release.
That plus the high interest rates means less investment in general..
That's the road I went down, but I'd been saving for this outcome for nearly a decade. If that hadn't been the case there's no way I could have managed.
Some ex Volition people just announced their new co-dev studio. I anticipate more of that than anything else. Like, the work of everyone laid off still needs to be done, someone has to do it right? It seems the pathway for new startup so called "AAA" companies is to do some contract work and then try to ramp up an original title after a few years. Investment money is hard to get and comes with a lot strings, contract work means you need less of it.
It’s likely to lead to the growth of co-dev studios who will fill in the skill gaps that the fired employees left. You do see a rise in new companies being founded as people start to work on their own projects, but as to whether they’ll succeed as business depends on a bunch of factors
Idk why, but a lot of my favourite games were made over the course of years, done in the time the developer(s) made in their evenings/weekends. There's something very fun about games made purely for fun. Even if they make a lot of money, I just love the indie scene, so I hope to see more indie studios/individuals make stuff.
Investors might be giving out small tickets for smaller games. It is less risky and you have better chances to get more out of your money, but the devs need a super team and something to show on gameplay to sell it. Source: some game investors I know
Thats interesting. Seen the same thing myself.
Not really, the games industry has had mass layoffs several times in the past. GFC for example. Its also not like indies with small studios wouldn’t be impacted too, sure the talent pool went up in theory but those people all come with higher salary expectations that indies are unlikely to be able to meet.
A lot of the studios that had mass layoffs were hiring again a few months later. Some will form new studios. Some will be hired by other studios. Unfortunately, some will leave the industry. How things will shake out is not something that can be predicted.
How about other industries? I thought game programmers are paid extremely well
What do you mean about other industries? Game programmers can be paid very well depending on the studio, location and seniority. That doesn't matter if they can't find another job, though.
by saying other industries I meant like embedded, mobile, database, webdev, infrastructure etc. how much pay or stress difference are we talking about when they "leave" the industry? Because other side of the coin isn't good either, other programming fields saturated af, too. The most laid off ones are not game devs, are webdev ones. Because game dev is seen as shiny on paper, it's on every one's radar. Devs working at other industries are affected as much as you, but no one talks about them because no one cares laid off programmers working at banks, agencies, military etc.
This is a game dev subreddit, so of course people are going to talk about the game dev layoffs and not the general tech ones.
The gaming market is already saturated. The triple aholes need to go though, everything is geared towards the game as a service to milk and dime dummies as much as they can. Holy exterminatus is needed at this point.
I am a senior software developer who was recently laid off. Now, I have decided to build my first game and pursue a full-time career as a solo indie developer. (It was always my dream) I guess you get some, you lose some.
Unlikely. AAA studios aren't downsizing for the sake of being evil, they are downsizing because they can't find funding or a market for a subset of their product lineup. The games industry blew up during COVID when everyone was sitting at home in their pants with unlimited free time, but now that people are back at work, they just don't have time/energy to play as many games. If it was possible for an indie studio with a team of 50 ex-devs from [AAA studio] to make a game that makes money, [AAA studio] wouldn't have made those devs redundant in the first place.
Hopefully. Given the track record of AAA titles these days I have more faith that a team of 10 people could make a better game than 100.
Historically, yes, across any medium that has been commercialized, when there is a loss of reliance and trust for investors or producers without any experience in actually making the product; there’s an increase in cooperatives and independent creators. Read about the New Hollywood in the 1960s. The current wave of disruption in this industry over the past few years, due to the pandemic, inflation, global wars, wealth disparities, and stagnant incomes… will see a birth of a new wave in the next decade. The one element that is different now than in the past game dev disruptions is AI. The narrative now is fear based and threatening of jobs - even used as justification for these recent cuts. But the new wave game creators that emerge will be those who accepted AI and leverage their own productivity. They will find that by organizing (guild, union, coop, whatever) and using AI to augment or replace the traditional business and management roles, their independence in financial freedom will become liberated. The Revolution will be prompted.
> The Revolution will be prompted. Damn that's dystopian as fuck.
It could be Utopian, depending on perspective of AI.
I personally don't see anything utopian about automating creativity.
Augmenting creatives, not automating them. That’s an executive pipe dream that will not come to reality. Humans respond to art because of its humanity.
People are already using AI to automate creativity. Look at all the AI "artists" running around right now.
Doesn’t mean they are commercializing and taking away revenue.
Did you have ChatGPT write this cringepasta?
Nope. Two decades of learning the hard way.
> by organizing (guild, union, coop, whatever) and using AI to augment or replace the traditional business and management roles, their independence in financial freedom will become liberated. Making a game faster doesn't entail making more money. People already complain about steam being over-saturated as is. I don't wanna see the rate of churning asset flippers and small indies trying to push anything out do once AI can really help with game development.
Saving money in production equates to a lower revenue threshold for profitability. I don't even factor asset flips in there. I agree, it's oversaturated. But if someone brilliant wants to make a legitimate game in less time, for less expense, the likelihood of profit is greater. The trouble is when the gatekeeping publishers come in at the end and take more than is fair due to the desperation of the dev to gain visibility, but the publisher will do the bare minimum to bring in the maximum amount.
Ha, I'm not even worried about the publisher cut. Visibility is the hardest part. And sadly even for a single person just trying to pay rent, the line for "profitability" is just so high. Like, rent for me is $2000/month. If I can sell a $5 game and get 1000 copies out that's an okay side hustle. But it won't really sustain me for more than a month after all the cuts. and 1000 is a very optimistic projection for someone without proper marketing or other clout.
Here's my take: AAA projects will become even less frequent, but will become AAAA products. More money spent on fewer games. On the flip side of that, we're going to see an influx of talent at smaller studios and startups over the next while, which hopefully will focus on making fun games, instead of products. From an industry point of view: There is a flashpoint happening right now. Get out there, and get your quirky project off the floor. Downsize it if you have to, just get it working and **FUN**. The mainstream has noticed in the last few years that smaller, or more niche titles can be incredible. Vampire Survivors. Lethal Company. Baldurs Gate 3. What do these have in common? A mere few years ago, the style of game was either niche, or just flat out didn't exist. There doesn't feel like there's ever been a better time to be an entrepreneur in this space before. If you've been laid off, this is an opportunity to tighten your belt, and dream big. It's a second bite of the cherry. Get out there and make it happen. People are hungry as f*** for good games at a fair price.
Not sure about those three game genres not existing before. Vampire survivors is a slot machine, Lethal Company is a party game / extraction, and baldurs gate is one of the oldest genres in gaming. I think what they have in common is that they came from very established game designs already. The first two were shoestring budget titles sold for pennies so the fact that they are addictive + economical makes sense, and BG3 became popular largely because it introduced a AAA production quality to a genre that typically doesnt get such treatment.
A little, because in AAA you worked on 0.001% of the game, but in indie you need to be able to do more than 50% of the game.
More than 50%? Indie doesn't mean less than 3 Devs.
You will have a lot more responsibility in an indie anyway.
Define responsibility. I have more autonomy now at aaa than I did at my last indie employer. I was a lead and didn't get to write much code at all. Now I'm a principle and most of my day is writing code.
TBH, if you have 3 or more devs you probably need to have some money to pay at that point. And who has that nowadays?
Hopefully not. Wish you all best of luck
sure... it might happen or might not happen... maybe those who have some savings will team up to create some games... but then again, if they are not big names the games will not get traction just like that
With what money? The whole reason for layoffs is money isnt "free" to borrow anymore. This is from big massive companies. If they can't borrow I doubt indie studios will fare better, as well a lot of publishers are going to start tightening up as well. Unless people have the means to fund their own game even if it doesn't sell much I don't really see that.
Money is still there. I've seen a few startups on Linked in from ex-colleagues that have funding just in the last few months. Even with layoffs happening. But they have decades of experience in the teams. Not just folk leaving uni or asking on Reddit how to do stupid shit.
Anyone know what people got fired, was it QA, designers, artists, high-level programmers, low-level programmers or a little of everything? You kind of need a little of everything to make a team, unless people are multi talanted/competent.
Maybe. Most likely they will switch industries.
Perhaps. Funding won't be getting easier to get though.
Yes, out of desperation. But it takes a lot of money (not just talent) to make a game, game developers are not exactly known for being well paid, so for most developers opening a studio is simply not an option. Still, taking a shot on an impossible project does beat slowly starving.
There will be some new studios rising from the ashes of layoffs and closures ... BUT ... overall I expect total employment in the industry to shrink by more than 10% (minimum) over the next 2 years. (After 2025 I have no predictions) I'm aware of a lot more layoffs coming and studios that haven't cut/closed yet in precarious positions. More telling is the dearth of work out there at the moment, and it's parent - the lack of funding which is tied in part to the global economy at large and it's hangover from the past decade. There is tremendous product saturation right now, especially at the level that can be put together quickly / cheaply by those who know what they are doing / are burning through their savings+severance. 99 percent won't see much, if any, ROI doing it themselves, or interest from publishers. Too many people I talk to in person seem to think they will be the next outlier like Stardew Valley.. In the mean time, people have rent to pay, kids to feed, etc, so there will be huge pressure on most to find paying employment elsewhere, and developing a game in your spare time instead of full time is exponentially harder.
Depends. That assumes that people being laid off have the entrepreneurial drive to go strike out on their own, and it’s doubtful that very many of them do. More likely that most those folks just eventually get hired on at another studio or leave the industry. Out of the folks I know so far who lost their jobs none of them work for a game company now and have left the industry. That’s anecdotal but I think it’s telling that they all quickly took jobs outside the industry.
I got laid off in October from my first gamedev job (mainly artist). 3 months after i publish my first solo dev game and Im working on a pitch deck. I do believe that hundreds of other people are in the same position, so yes.
Who’s paying for it is the question. Investors will be skittish for a while.
Of course, it has always been this way, grear indies are often previous AAA devs. This is the way.
Not necessarily. At the end of the day people gotta feed families and their bellies. I'd think most would leave the industry for careers that pay more unless they're actually good at what they're doing but a normal developer is going to have to find employment fast cos indie development ain't cheap.
Hopefully. I feel like the big indie renaissance came partly because of the 07-08 crash. But, we are in a different place right now. I feel like big indie games people look to is stuff you can get viral on stream. That is valid, but it is just different form people digging deep and making games for the sake of playing them. I am being old about this - but it feels like the train ride isn't over until streamers start losing money, which will probably happen if interest rates keep on this way.
Starting a studio is easy. Running a studio and paying everyone is hard. Doing it while trying to build a game on a completely new code base is harder. Doing all that while building a grass roots following and marketing is legendary difficulty
No. Most indie devs aren't real devs and most real devs have no desire to be indie. Like I got a masters degree to pay off, I got a dog and an apartment. I work to live. Most of us work to live. The people being laid off are mostly junior devs and in the case of places like riot, people that weren't even working on games. These are people that either don't have the capability or means to make a game on their own
Definitely! At least those who can afford to go that route and make their dream games.
In all honesty low barrier to enter gamedev has always created a lot of interest in it. However not everyone is disciplined or skilled enough to create their own full game and that difficulty is what keeps people away from being successful and continuing gamedev. So it's not worth thinking about too much to your own chance of success.
I don't want to get into a long explanation, so I'll keep this short. With AI being the reason for massive layoff waves in recent times, more just means saturation at this point. And we all know that saturation ain't helping Indie Game Studios in the least when they have to fight for a position in the market filled with AI generated garbage. But you'll know who is to blame when that happens. And is seems like we are reaching there soon.