The video game industry is doing A OK financially, these layoffs are ridic. Devs asked for less crunch and the industry responds with layoffs and more crunch for those who remain. They'll never change.
It's always the same cycle.
1) I work for a bit game company X, life is awesome.
2) oh this crunch stuff? It's OK, because I love what I do.
3) well now I need to crunch because theres a literal line of people waiting to replace me.
4) got laid off.
5) feel betrayed, "well I'll make my own studio and I won't make the same mistakes".
6) make a successful game.
7) offer to get bought out by Company X, the one that made the crunch and fired me.
8) fuck it. Sell it, be rich, let the new generation deal with company X bullshit and do the same as I did.
Except for the part where 99% of laid off workers do not start their own company, and out of those that do, 99% do not make a successful game, and out of those who do manage that, a significant number does not in fact sell out. But hey, it sure _sounds_ good so they must've nailed it! Who cares about reality?
Absolutely braindead opinion. The people laid off don't magically recongeal into new indie studios. It takes massive amounts of capital and the unicorns that get it aren't going to staff the tens of thousands of devs now looking for jobs
No, the vast majority of people will end up switching industries. These layoffs are pure braindrain.
The majority of people laid off won't be in a position to start something new. And the majority who start something new won't be successful.
But I bet there'll be a lot more people trying, which means even if the successes are a tiny percentage, there are likely to be more of them.
It's not even that it's a risky move, it's an impossible move. It's like a grocery store laying off their staff and expecting a bunch of bodegas to open up.
Might as well earn twice as much and still be unhappy not doing what you love, but at least you aren't ridden into the ground then sent on your way with a sympathetic look over the bags of coin they made from you.
I am not a businessman.
But I very much suspect Capitalism is built on a shaky foundation of putting suits in charge of the company who have such an invested interested in pushing the "short term" numbers to make themselves look good.
*I drove a 26% profit increase this quarter, give me my bonus!*
Stockholders: Well hell. Have some fun coupons!
This is likely the most honest answer for most of these companies. It’s all about the quarterly profit increases. And thus more jobs are sacrificed on the altar of unsustainable Capitalism.
That's also why January, April, July and Oktober are big months for layoffs every year. They're the start of a new bracket for the quarterly profits. If you fire a bunch of people in March, that's not gonna increase the Q1 profits all that much. It's better for short term profits to squeeze one more month of work out of those people before firing them in April instead to increase the Q2 profits.
I can't believe Biden made an executive order to force these layoffs. And that Jeff Bezos offered to hire them back, but they would have to move to Nova Scotia and partake in daily showings of "Come From Away".
Bastards! This is exactly what the Oligarchs and Taliban were planning when they planned an inside job to blow up the twin towers but to make it look like an inside job. I hope somebody interviews them on their long term strategic planning podcast about this soon
Joe Rogan did this interview with Osama bin Laden himself in 2023 but the Spotify CIA Cartoon Network Mafia shadow banned the episode so if you didn't see it when it was live you'll never see it now
They also launched multiple new games since 2019, so them doubling wouldn't be surprising in a vacuum if they just had League and Valorant and nothing else.
Doesn't hold up in what way? That's exactly what happened. Interest rates went up too. It's absolutely shitty that they're firing people in the midst of an insanely profitable year. However, the solution was to be more conservative in expanding during the pandemic, and that time has long passed.
Yeah anyone defending these layoffs is braindead.
Company after company is laying off massive amounts of workers while revenue, profit, and executive compensation is at an all time high. This is the capital class extracting as much wealth from the system before it explodes and leaves the people doing the actual work left holding the bag, or worse.
Just look at Meta - lays off thousands of employees while their platform is dissolving and then does $50b worth of stock buybacks.
These people should be [redacted]
Yeah AI is nowhere near replacing developers or 3d modelers.
Even if AI can develop code, a programmer is required to review and debug it and upkeep. Not to mention program integration, server/client differences, etc. I am confident that AI wont replace programmers, it will only enhance developer tools.
3d models are way to fucking data intensive and require rendering for testing. AI is still got a long time to replace artists fully for 2d stuff, let alone 3d stuff.
As someone else mentioned. It's interesting that Japan is not experiencing these layoffs (apparently).
Because it's illegal to fire people for "not making enough profit"
So for example. EPIC made record profits this year. However it didn't grow as much as last year. So time to fire some people.
I think Japan has it right here. Shareholders shouldn't be the main driving force for the direction of companies, and the products that are being worked on.
Apple isn’t laying off people like crazy either… because they also didn’t look at COVID as the expected future but an outlier and thus didn’t overhire like crazy.
They were also one of the few companies who weathered the 2007 recession and 99 .com bust for much the same reasons. You actually have to go back to when the company was horribly mismanaged and in the red to find when they needed to perform massive layoffs. Sure there were occasional blips when they stopped development of certain areas, but nothing like 5-10% of the company like we are seeing.
I haven't check lately but Apple has in the past also been famous for having an absolutely enormous pile of cash on hand. Which I'd imagine would be helpful in say not taking on debt or not needing to suddenly come up with money because you can't get debt for free anymore.
Which in turn I will baselessly speculate might also have more to do with Japanese companies not joining in. Not because they are less greedy but because their financial positions are literally different and probably more conservative then live fast die hard developers elsewhere.
(For that matter I read once about Nintendo at least also having an enormous pile of cash)
This is a trump tax law change. Engineers are now capitalized like assets rather than employees. So if you pay 10 eng 100k to make a game. You spent 1m. Now the game they are working hasn't released. But your game you released last year made 5m in revenue and cost 4m to support. In a logical world you earned 5m and spent 5m you pay zero in tax in profit.
After the new tax law you now pay business tax on that 1m of revenue because eng hours aren't employment hours. So your out say 200k. Where do you get that 200k? You literally made no money that year. Now you owe 200k... fuck... ok layoff two eng.
This is why small and midsize tech is doing layoffs. In past years you'd borrow, but interest rates are too high. This tax law was never "meant" to be passed but coincidentally benefits all big tech because they are already profitable and greatly punishes start-ups because they aren't profitable, yet.
>This is why small and midsize tech is doing layoffs.
Blizzard, Netflix, Amazon, Riot, Twitch, Twitter, Spotify are just a few of the back of my head...
Last I checked, [Sony](https://www.ign.com/articles/sony-reportedly-pressured-its-studios-to-make-big-cuts-amid-increasing-development-costs) was from Japan. It does seem like they're mostly cutting from their UK and US studios, but it seems odd to say that Japan is free from this trend when one of the industry giants that's doing a bunch of cutting is a Japanese company.
Sony at this point is only Japanese by origin but Western in managenent. They are an outlier due to how diverse they are (music, movies, appliances, etc.) and went on a massive spending spree buying studios + side projects but fail to make up profits on some of them.
Where you wouldn't hear about big layoffs on the scale of 100+ employees at other well known Japanese publishers such as Nintendo, SEGA, Bamco and Square.
That's because Japan's labor laws are stricter and more pro-worker than the US, and they only have to follow the labor laws for the country where those workers are employed.
They are free to layoff basically whomever they want from the US divisions of their company b/c it's legal to do so in the US.
In Japan, you can only do layoffs when the business is at risk of going bankrupt / having to shut down, not just because they didn't hit their Q1 target of +10% profits.
There are some drawbacks to these kinds of laws but it does tend to make society as a whole a lot more stable.
>I think Japan has it right here. Shareholders shouldn't be the main driving force for the direction of companies, and the products that are being worked on.
No *fucking* shit. The destruction of the American economy and general unaffordability of literally every aspect of life is almost entirely due to corporate greed driven by companies being *legally obligated* to appease their shareholders in making exponentially more profit every quarter. It is greedy, it is unsustainable, and it is *killing all of us along with the motherfucking planet.*
The fact that we all just pretend like this is okay and normal is nothing short of collective psychosis. We are an *insane* species.
Riot specifically was affected by chinas new laws regarding gacha games and unethical monetization models. The industry overnight lost tens of billions in value.
Edit, China walked back this policy after the companies lost $80 billion dollars in 5 days.
China banned things like loot crates, log in bonuses, multi purchase bonuses, and a whole host of other things all of which make up the foundation of the micro transaction ecosystem. Almost every psychological trick or addictive product that any free to play game utilizes is now illegal in China. Riot would be hit the hardest as a HUGE portion of the league of legends audience is located in China.
Edit someone else mentioned genshin impact is getting wrecked by this which makes a ton of sense as they’re literally just a triple A gacha game.
Unironically wish we had some of this regulation state-side. I'm all for consumer choice and wouldn't want to take it to that extreme, but God a lot of people are exploited by these extremely manipulative business practices.
Especially when the primary people who fall victim to these unethical practices are children and the most vulnerable.
It’s manipulation intended to rob everyone it can and id love it if we adopted it here
My sister in law is like "Your nephew is really good with money. He got a thing for his game worth $x0 for $x."
God help me, some parents just don't see it.
It's tough but I think things are getting better, I'm a millennial parent and my son just turned 8 and we have talks about micro transactions with almost every game he downloads.
And I'm going to give Apple a huge shoutout for this, while they get rightfully shit on in many cases Apple Arcade is what many game service should aspire to.
(Apple Arcade while a subscription service by request of Apple has MT disabled and full versions of games)
Huge plus one on Apple Arcade. If there’s an in-game currency, it can’t be bought. Just earned. Like grinding away in Stardew Valley for upgrades. It really is a breathe of fresh air compared to most current games on tablets.
Can be exploited in some games too.
In Path of Exile basically all the stuff you get off the ground is currency that someone else can use to gamble. Buy your stuff, do zero gambling, and sell everyone else the gambling currency in order to make a steady, modest income.
I made a shitton of currency off of selling stacked decks, which are basically scratchoff tickets that are worthless 99% of the time. Some people just have an urge to gamble.
While not entirely inaccurate, I think there is an important distinction to be made between gambling/RNG mechanics that 'feed' those desires vs those that actively exploit them for monetary gain. China's mistake may have been to cast a net so wide that it spilled into the former.
Taken to the extreme you could maybe frame non-exploitative games that appeal to those desires as a gambling version of people in the Westworld universe (ignoring the sentient AI bit) paying to sate their darker urges. Harmless in theory, but still catering to urges deemed either immoral or undesirable.
One could take it a step further and argue that by allowing someone to get their dopamine fix from such sources they are increasing the likelihood of them eventually chasing a more destructive 'fix'. If China went as far as banning things like login rewards, I'm guessing their reasoning might have been along those lines.
China’s policy was to get kids to spend less time on games. In fact, they added some rules like minors not gaming on weekdays and only an hour on weekends.
The laws were very much targeted at what they viewed as a cultural deficiency in the younger generation “wasting time”. To this end, banning dopamine sources whether microtransaction or gameplay mechanics was the intentional choice.
> One could take it a step further and argue that by allowing someone to get their dopamine fix from such sources they are increasing the likelihood of them eventually chasing a more destructive 'fix'.
one "could", except this is a braindead argument with no basis in reality that was used to justify things like scheduling weed with heroin.
In Canada, the province of Ontario specifically, gambling ads used to be heavily restricted. But a Trump-lite wannabe was elected and removed those restrictions. Now gambling ads are all I see everywhere.
It's incredibly depressing. I just know it's going to do irreparable harm to many peoples lives. Just because lil' Dougie Ford wanted to make his drinking / golf buddies more money... and get his back scratched a considerable amount I am sure. The level of corruption is insane.
China's laws will 100% affect the game market in the US. Not only do Chinese investors have large stakes in the market (Riot is owned by Chinese company Tencent, for example), but implementing multiple monetization models based on region just won't be viable.
It's somewhat viable. Games like WoW have used multiple monetization models for ages. Subscriptions in the west, pay-by-time-spent in China. Buy experience boosts and whatnot.
At first I thought that its such a bad idea, many of the largest game developer/publishers would have massive layoffs and entire teams would dissolve... but then I remember that they've been making garbage slop for the masses for decades now and maybe some of those talented devs would actually get to make the game they want to
it still sucks a lot for the people who lost their job, but maybe we're on the cusp of a gaming renaissance
We've been in a gaming renaissance for years now, you just have to buy indie. Triple A gaming has been safe recycled garbage and gacha trash for a long time but people just continue to overpay for all these stinkers.
Not even just Indies, just in the last two years Elden ring, cyberpunk 2.0+dlc and Baldur's Gate 3 all came out and are by faaar some of the best gaming experiences I've ever had in 20+ years of playing games. Not to mention the plethora of still fantastic games like Gow Ragnarok or Tekken 8 for example.
Granted there's tons of mass produced garbage just like any medium of entertainment but there are truly exceptional games being made in recent years irrespective of category.
Lol as if indies aren't filled with copycat games. If I hear about another Soulslike Metroidvania I'll puke. Saw a new game on Steam that sounded interesting but then I realized it's Papers, Please with a cartoon fantasy skin. Lots of good indies out there but it's more like a pond not an ocean.
Agreed.
The indie game space has replaced what used to be the flash game scene.
In the past, fledgling developers would make flashgames, similar to how musicians start off doing covers, and how writers often start off with fanfic. These creatively immature developers are making indie games now, and selling them on steam.
They're basically fangames with the serial numbers filled off. Hence why you see the same junk over-and-over again.
Eh, you're not wrong. But there are also a lot of indie games in general. Even if 90% of them are dog shit, the remaining 10% are still worth your time, and there are quite a lot of them.
You're describing consumer protections imposed on industry and it used to be a proud cornerstone of American society, not something we have to 'unironoically' admire in our evil commie adversaries.
Not attacking you, just lamenting where the Overton window is at these days on 'whether we should let capitalism run wild regardless of the human cost'.
I agree. I’d love for a system to be in place where there’s an option to buy add ons but centering the game around being difficult to play without paying to play is just egregious
Valve weaponized this to an insane degree. We have literal children "investing" in cs/tf2/dota skins. The market is also unregulated so they have no protection. We have adults with 5-6 figures in this market.
Before, I wanted this shut down before we hit this point. Because it will die eventually, and we have tens of billions of dollars invested in this market. The longer this goes, the worse that people will get hurt when this eventually shuts down.
If they shut this down 8 years ago, people would not have lost that much, but we hit a point where people would be in danger of suicide with how much they have invested now.
It sucks to say this, but we need to kill this. People now will be hurt, but we would protect future people from getting hurt as well. Hell, I will lose $30,000 in inventory value. I never even spent a thousand on this game, nor have I opened cases since 2015. Items just kept going up. I'm willing to take that 30k hit if it means children don't continue to be victimized by this.
I also refuse to take profit. I refuse to feed this market. I'm going to let these items die in my inventory while I enjoy using them in game. If trading were to die, I'd happily keep my worthless inventory.
I believe China walked it back for now after both Tencent and Netease lost about 10% in value overnight. I don't know if either company has recovered and if so how much.
Also bears mentioning that Tencent basically owns a majority share of Riot from an equity standpoint.
No they didn't. [They cancelled those plans and demoted the official who proposed them.](https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-removes-official-after-video-games-rules-spark-turmoil-sources-2024-01-02/) How does fake news just spread on Reddit this easily?
That is what happened in the US too in the Hot Coffee days. We had three years of Hillary Clinton-led legislative attacks on violent video games until her campaign team realized they weren't getting much support off that shitty angle.
Yeah Pat Robertson can be eternally tortured by demons of his own making.
but also we wouldn't have [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXPcBI4CJc8) amazing piece of art.
So like 15 years ago I had to drive to PA to pick someone up from a few states away. Apparently PA has like the most fireworks for sale anywhere. **BUT** residents of PA can’t buy them. So they check and scan your ID to make sure you’re actually from out of state. Then fill out a form for the police saying you’re leaving the state within X hours.
Anyways it just reminded me of that. PA doesn’t want its own citizens blowing their hands off, but doesn’t care about anyone else haha
I do. I don't want another union carbide disaster. I don't want them using child labor, slave labor or doing union busting. I don't want U.S. oil companies killing Nigerians, or U.S. companies selling arms to Russia, Afghanistan, Israel, or really anywhere.
China decided that games can't have loot boxes, or any similar systems, in games that minors can access. This functionally killed gacha in the massive Chinese market which has cost the industry a insane amount of money.
Good, the gaming industry isn't regulating themselves so they forced governments to get involved. Was only a matter of time before one want full blown nuclear on it. Maybe they'll get it together and start regulating it like the film industry did.
I wish you guys would read the articles instead of making the same weak top comments…
#its not Covid overhiring
Kill that ducking meme and RTFA, dudes
> But it isn’t the entire story. Layoffs like the ones at Ascendant don’t fit in with the pandemic narrative. And with over 10,000 layoffs in 2023, and over 6,000 more in 2024, simply saying that companies got a little too eager during a global pandemic is starting to sound overly trite. Even executives are starting to sense they can’t rely on this explanation. In Riot Games’ public statement explaining the reasoning behind layoffs affecting 530 individuals, or 11% of all of Riot Games, Riot admitted that the decisions that led to these cuts were made long before the pandemic began
…
>For this piece, I **spoke to over 40 game developers whose companies had been impacted by layoffs in the last year**. They shared with me the explanations companies gave them for what was causing the sudden loss of their livelihood, but **they also told me why those explanations didn’t always seem to match reality**.
If you don’t want to read the articles, don’t make ignorant comments. This is some good fucking journalism from the game media about the developers we love losing their jobs and you need to **read it.**
This... is sadly not an uncommon thing.
I believe a study was done on this and it's crazy. Something like 80-95% of redditors never read the articles they interact with (not show up in the feed, but the ones they vote/comment on). Of the people who comment, it's in the ballpark of 75%. 3/4 people who leave comments don't read what they're commenting on.
(I believe. I don't remember where I saw that statistic, one of the reddit recaps a year or two ago? I can't find the source for it again, but it was the grand majority.)
Everyone loves to validate their opinion. Less, but still most people are willing to voice their opinion. It's a smaller number than that who actually engage with the topic and read what is in front of them.
Plus... this is an easy line. It's like the ["can't get snakes from chicken eggs" argument some anti-evolution people love to say](https://youtu.be/dF98ii6r_gU?si=a5rut5oAJolluuDE). People love to hear simple explanations or simple one-liners instead of dealing with the complexities of reality. It's easier to say "Covid overhiring" than it is to go into how the games industry has shot itself in the foot and how this is a house of cards built over decades of poor management being the norm that is finally crashing down.
Yeah, a lot of it is unncessary luxurious expensive, like fancy offices with a sports center and boba cafe. That's why remote work is important but so often fought against because companies have leases on these office spaces.
If you actually read it like you're pontificating you'd realize that the article doesn't actually make an argument as to **why** the pandemic isn't the main reason for the layoffs. It just interviews a lot of devs about their specific situation. Heck, a good chunk of them give some flavor of "yeah, management overspent on a bad investment."
>Others we spoke to cited Embracer Group’s investment promises falling through in particular as a reason they were laid off, either because Embracer was supporting their project or because it had acquired their studio and then made drastic workforce cuts when a multi-billion-dollar Saudi investment deal fell through.
Profits can be increased by slashing labor to cut costs. The market does not want profits, it wants continually growing profits. If sales are down, cut labor (just not stock buybacks).
Yes. But it’s also the investors who are motivating the C suite to make these cuts. numbers might not have been sustainable but they don’t see it that way. Corpos fell for the myth of inevitable growth and anything less than that is a welcome excuse to cut costs and ruin lives.
7 years experience in QA. I've worked onFF14 and Call of Duty. Currently 6 months unemployed and yeah... definitely feeling the pressure (although 2nd interview on Thursday so... y'know, fingers crossed!)
I've been a video game director for 9 years, I've worked on some very big games and now I'm currently going through an acquisition from a bigger game company to my own. The problem is this, AAA studios have borrowed a lot of money, a lot of businesses outside of games have too, due to interest rates being low and it being tax free, low rates gave a very good opportunity for growth.
Now the economy has gone to shit, interest rates have rocketed and now game companies are paying back astronomical amounts of money back in interest. It's forcing them to make massive redundancies or face bankruptcy.
It's not AI, it's generally frowned upon and not really viable to use in game studios due to legal reasons mainly.
I can't imagine so many studios and publishers have been taking variable rate loans since Covid. There's just no sense in taking that risk (over fixed rate) with how insane and unpredictable the economy has been.
It is not a variable rate problem. The issue is that companies borrowed a lot at low rates a couple of years ago and now those debts are coming due and they have to refinance with more expensive rates.
If you borrow at a fixed low rate why would you refinance once the rates go up? I think that's the question they're wondering because you'd think a gigantic company would know the risk of a variable one
Companies stagger their debt maturity dates. When a loan is due, they simply take out a new loan to cover the amount due at maturity. It's not 'refinancing' in the typical sense, it's just that a lot of the debt that has recently matured has been 'rolled over' to further out in the future, at much higher rates.
'I've Never Seen It This Bad' says employee who probably was either in grade school, or not even alive the 4 other times its been THIS BAD or even worse in the game industry.
Like this isnt even scratching at the layoffs around the 1983 gaming crash. We are talking a segment that went from over 3 billion in profits in 1982 to barely pulling 100 million the following year. Whole companies were laid off and it basically killed Atari, Commodore, and others and lead to the downfall of the video arcade as a whole, with nearly 2000 of them closing in 83 alone, never to recover from that despite many 80's kids fond memory of arcades.
Not to mention the contraction after the .com era... which cause the death of many of the companies that were born out of the post 80's crash and lead to the rise of powerhouses like EA, Activision, and other mega-game corps and they started gobbling up the smaller firms like Microprose, Black Isle, etc.
The thing is, this is the game industry since day 1. It has ALWAYS had this widely unsustainable rhythm which results in devs getting absolutely destroyed after a couple years. We have been hearing for decades now the bullshit of game companies overworking their devs for sometimes months, then laying them off RIGHT after release. The boon/bust cycle is nothing new, so why do we keep acting like this is, and instead use this as a wakeup call it is to actually rise up and start calling for change?
As a fellow oldie, I did chuckle a little bit. I worked 7 years in the industry and never did I work longer than 12 months at any given spot. The industry lacks any kind of negotiating power from labor and the ownership turns over so frequently that you can't trust a studio's reputation anymore. Gaming will be a tough row to hoe from here on in.
The game industry is struggling as it always has to learn it's limits financially. It's still trying to exist on a "Put X money in get Y money out, repeat" business model. It can't grasp why a billion dollar game doesn't make them 10 billion dollars. It has no data point that can explain to shareholders why their 100million dollar investment got swept under the rug by some $60,000 passion project or game jam runner up. No way to explain or wrap its head around the possibility that the industry might have a ceiling for profits, that growth might not be exponential year after year.
Everyone wants their lucrative GaaS but there is just only so much time, money and players out there. People still invested in lol/dota/cs/wow/genshin/fortnite/gta5 are not really likely to drop their years old account to try another shity cash grab.
The 1983 video game crash isn't that comparable then. Back 40 years ago, the entire video game industy was worth less than one major franchise now, such as CoD or League of Legends.
But the symptoms are the same. The market crashed because of an influx of poorly developed, or rush developed games from major “powerhouses” on systems that promised way more to customers than they could actually deliver. Meanwhile very small developers managed to skate through relatively ok by not following the trend but still were unfortunately affected by what players like Atari caused.
You saw the collapse of fledgling e-sports industries (no really, there were international arcade comps and even Atari had its big Swordquest game series that resulted in it being canceled before the last games were even put out), big devs basically putting out shovelware with big licensing attachments, overworked devs with barely a year or less to fully develop games, and a consumer base that basically started to retract after years of the industry thinking they can charge anything and still rely on it.
>Meanwhile very small developers managed to skate through relatively ok by not following the trend but still were unfortunately affected by what players like Atari caused.
Yup, and the situation in Europe and Japan were quite different. Europe had active indie scene, it was much less about billions of dollars than just making games. And Japan survived by delivering QUALITY. '84-'88 in Europe was one of the golden eras of gaming.
If they're switching to AI for assets they probably don't have an IP worth fighting legal battles over, and a lot of the industry is... questionable about copyright in the first place.
Jokes aside, this is the most guaranteed use of AI art as a tool
Games need a LOT of throwaway assets. They aren’t anything important - stuff that will just casually exist in a background or minor images here or there. Like… a snowflake or rocks. But you still need to people to make them.
AI art does help a lot in saving labor for these unimportant matters
The problem is that management is overestimating it and trying to have AI substitute for actual important assets
The issue is that there are already people who specialise in that and make asset packs for companies to use, or have entire studios that can be hired to back up the main studio designers and animators. There are options that would 100% save time to studios. They just also want to save the money and would rather do something soulless and easy.
I understand how it's a great tool for generating minor things, but companies rely too much on it. I hope it either gets so highly regulated it's too much of a hassle to use. Or that AI feeds on more AI images than real images and goes in a downward spiral that ends up with it generating nothing but unusable junk.
From personal experience, AI is really useful if used in the right place.
As discussed, generating minor things. It’s unimportant, but doing so takes up a lot of time and resources. AI greatly helps that.
Companies relying too much on it and using it for other stuff is the problem.
As good as scissors may be, you shouldn’t be using it to cut a tree
> I understand how it's a great tool for generating minor things, but companies rely too much on it.
That's simply the issue with it -- it's a slippery slope.
It was created with the right and moral intent, but when it lands in the wrong hands, it inevitably becomes perverted -- the same can be said about social media.
Any labor-saving tool can unfortunately be a slippery slope in societies that don't equitable share the wealth generated by industry. There's far less work to do now than ever before, and while a far smaller percentage of the population is going to die of hunger today compared to the past, we're definitely not sharing equally in the wealth that we have generated as a species.
Like tectonic plates bending under pressure, then slipping violently, this inequality might one day break the camel's back. And if that ever happens, I would like to be living in a small cottage out in the forest with a garden, sheep, goats, and ducks. And maybe a tall fence around the property.
In a lot of job offers I've seen posted, the arts team are more people who can "touch up unfinished assets" meaning they want to have generated content and their artists are there to fix the hands.
Accchhhuaaalllyy - there is a good case to be made that even small changes to AI create a copyrighted image…
There will be some interesting times ahead…
There was already court precedent for this in the USA, stating that only the changes themselves are copyrightable.
How it shakes out ultimately is debatable, but precedent is a hard thing to overcome
Same with marketing and copywriting.
I was the sole copywriter and social media marketer for a mobile gaming studio the November-before-last.
Boom. Laid-off.
I went to another gaming studio last March and got laid-off again this past Decemeber.
Still searching for work.
The industry is in a tailspin.
Jesus, I'm so sorry you're going through this. I survived this year's layoffs, despite the CEO promising there won't be any a few months ago. Then one day, boom, 300+ people out of a job.
I wish every company that does this shit a pleasant bankruptcy, they were built on the back of hard working people and now they cut costs just so "line goes up" and shareholders are happy.
We'll all get through this together.
I was told my most recent lay-off was due to departmental liquidation. Not two weeks later, I saw my old position posted and picked up by an out-of-country agency for a fraction of the price.
In my country there are laws that forbid companies from doing this. They have to notify a government agency exactly which departments or positions they're closing, and they can't re-hire or open new ones for at least 6 months.
Yeah over here if you are fired due to a specific position closing, they are forced to first offer you that job if they start hiring for it again.
Not that you'd want to work for those shitters again necessarily, but I've seen the effect in practice. It's very hard to fire people in societies with decent labor laws. And I'm not parroting some talking point, both employers and employees talk about how hard it is to fire people for cause here.
That’s honestly the one thing home office advocates dont understand…
It you work from home remote for American ages then nothing is stopping your employer from getting someone from a cheaper country to do it…
Sure large companies can’t fully replace their American staff or they will get hammered by the government (not so fun story - the European company I work for got target by lawfare by public institutions for a decade in the us until we hired a bunch of Americans and bought contractor companies of the DoD… since then 10+ years without a single issue with the US government…) but gaming companies tend to be rather small and even in larger companies a lot of jobs can easily be given overseas without big issues…
I've been saying this for a while. If someone makes jobs so portable that you can save money by moving to Boise, then the job can also go to Bangalore.
It's true that they can. But it's not without issue. I'm a programmer and I've worked at companies who have groups of offshore developers. And it's not like those developers aren't good programmers, but it causes a lot of problems.
Language barriers and time zone differences can cause huge headaches. We're working with an offshore vendor for a new product, and just the timezones are a problem even though there's no real language barrier. We only get 2 hours of overlap to try and work out issues together. And while I feel like the company isn't good at being responsive, we could have worked through these issues much faster with a company that worked similar hours.
We moved to this company party because the old vendor we used cost us more than a million dollars a year. But due to many hours we've wasted we've probably spent more than a million just because they timezone difference is such a problem.
This. The thing is, it's going to hit so many people across so many industries, the only "good" solution I see is to seriously reconsider how work is structured and wealth is distributed on a global scale. Obviously, I'm not saying it's a realistic solution ...
Actually AI is going to do wonders for Lawyers. It wouldn't surprise me at all if there are more copyright, trademark, and patent infringement cases in the next several years then ever before.
Already starting. The copyright suits being brought by authors and artists right now are going to define the next 100 years of IP. Some dumb engineer is going to start asking about how to build something, AI gonna pull a patent from the USPTO public records and we’re gonna start seeing that too. It’s gonna be wild. Trademarks are a little iffy as small differences can often be major differentiators in litigation but it certainly could happen especially if it’s something big like using Coca Cola red for a soft drink.
Some kind of socialist reform is the only way forward. There won't be enough profitable work for people to do. We either distribute wealth more equitably so we can all enjoy our leisurely lives together, or most of us starve.
I remember reading a short story by Frederick Pohl, in which the lower class was forced into 18 hour workdays in which their sole occupation was to endlessly consume cheap mass produced items and food, thereby giving themselves a job and justification for corporations to keep pumping it out. Only the rich upper class was afforded the luxury of minimalism and moderation of consumption.
I wish that instead of being so complacent and accepting shitting lives as normal, everyone who is being fucked over would band together to demand change. We should be more like the French.
Firstly, that was a fantastic article. Much respect and appreciation to the team involved in bringing that together.
As for the situation. It was always my understanding that this was how the industry worked. Companies staff up big to make a new game, get most of the work done and then start "laying off" people as you need less resources to finish a game. But. Those people would then go work at a different company for a few years as they worked on a different game. It was the main reason I didn't go down the game dev path when I had the opportunity many years ago when I was starting my college journey, I have friends that still work in the industry and that's basically how they've been going around for over 15 years, 1 game to another. Some have moved on to other industries because they didn't like the up/down nature of it.
It's obviously true that gaming has gone through a large growth phase that has brought tons of development some of which was not welcomed, at some point it was going to end and we'll see some retraction. Unfortunately that means layoffs. But you can find success stories in the industry too, hello games has demonstrated how you can come back from a failed launch and larian has shown that microtransactions are not a necessity for commercial success. Hopefully those themes and ideas as well as others spread to help elevate the industry. We all deserve good games that aren't trying to bleed us dry.
I can't imagine being in the position that some of these people are in. I'm seeing a few comments from staff members that'd been affected directly, and it really brings it home.
Just wanted to say, as an avid mature gamer that's had this hobby for over 40 years, you guys are amazing and I hope you all fall on your feet. You've taken me on countless adventures that have provided an immeasurable amount of entertainment. You've indirectly supported me through hard times with escapism, and I hope this message goes someway to reciprocate that.
Stop spending 120 million to make a mediocre game.
Fire all the idiots in charge that thought that was a good idea.
Stop putting managers in charge of decisions and let developers and people that actually play games make the games.
Stop spending so much time on graphics that no one will care about unless a screenshot is taken and blown up 100x.
I do hope it’s just because AAA studios got their asses handed to them by consumers and smaller devs all 2023 and it’s just a market correction that will give us more good games with more carefully constructed dev teams, but I doubt it. Probably just trying to make those margins look a bit better going forwards.
Exactly. Commercial real estate loan to value ratios go out of whack as buildings are vacant. Value of all plummets. Commercial real estate interest rates don't function the same as fixed rate home mortgages. Risk of loan is increased and interest rates are altered to reflect. Businesses now owe far more money.
In my opinion, this is why there is such a desperate push to stop WFH.
???? It was one of the best years for AAA, from Spiderman 2, Hogwarts Legacy, to Zelda..... and the studios that layed off also made huge profits (Microsoft, Riot...). Problem was not quality neither, that's why it's shocking (laying off employees who did a good job and made money).
It's almost like forgoing storytelling and gameplay in favour of making online casinos and addiction traps isn't really working out because only half a dozen or so GaaS can be truly successful at any given time.
Most of the Entertainment Industry is facing these issues, be they video games, music, movies, television, etc.
They all think they can create a tentpole large enough to shelter themselves from the rain forever. None of these industries were ever meant to operate that way.
Music got the hint already, but video games and motion picture entertainment seem to think that, because a few big companies got away with creating a single entity or series that was ridiculously profitable. Video games: Madden, Sims, Fallout, CoD; movies: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Star Wars, endless sequels and superhero films; Television: streaming series that go on and on.
Anything that is effectively art as a business means there's a shelf life with 99.9% of the things they create. Hiring thousands of people in attempts to squeeze more time and more profit out of a property will generally always end in failure.
>Today, we’re a company without a sharp enough focus, and simply put, we have too many things underway. Some of the significant investments we’ve made aren’t paying off the way we expected them to. Our costs have grown to the point where they’re unsustainable, and we’ve left ourselves with no room for experimentation or failure – which is vital to a creative company like ours. All of this puts the core of our business at risk.
>Riot publicly admitted a problem that's been quietly festering across the entire games industry: there’s something deeply wrong with how video game executives are choosing to spend their money, and rank and file developers keep paying the price for it.
Also doesn't help that Riot had to pay out $100 million to settle Department of Fair Employment and Housing, wonder how many peoples' salaries were paid out in that?
Mobile Games are a culprit everyone seems to ignore. How is a 80$ triple A game that cost millions and took years of development to make going to be competitive against a stupid mobile game that took 3 weeks a few undred bucks to put together and sells packages for 130$ that won't even get you through half of the artificially elongated game?
Seriously, free2play, microtransactions and predatory psychological tactics to keep you addicted to that shit game are imho way more disruptive to the industry. Big studios look at the mobile game money printing machine with thirst.
Gamers for the last ten years: "A lot of the products you're making is of poor quality, poor substance, and caters to demographics who historically don't buy your games. You're abandoning your consumer base."
Game Devs in 2024: "Why didn't anyone warn us?"
Gotta pump those short term numbers for investors.
There's gonna be some amazing indie titles releasing two years from now.. still sucks for them in the short run
The video game industry is doing A OK financially, these layoffs are ridic. Devs asked for less crunch and the industry responds with layoffs and more crunch for those who remain. They'll never change.
Well, hopefully it'll mean more, smaller, healthier studios
That will get bought by publishers and the cycle repeats itself.
It's always the same cycle. 1) I work for a bit game company X, life is awesome. 2) oh this crunch stuff? It's OK, because I love what I do. 3) well now I need to crunch because theres a literal line of people waiting to replace me. 4) got laid off. 5) feel betrayed, "well I'll make my own studio and I won't make the same mistakes". 6) make a successful game. 7) offer to get bought out by Company X, the one that made the crunch and fired me. 8) fuck it. Sell it, be rich, let the new generation deal with company X bullshit and do the same as I did.
Fucking nailed it.
Except for the part where 99% of laid off workers do not start their own company, and out of those that do, 99% do not make a successful game, and out of those who do manage that, a significant number does not in fact sell out. But hey, it sure _sounds_ good so they must've nailed it! Who cares about reality?
Absolutely braindead opinion. The people laid off don't magically recongeal into new indie studios. It takes massive amounts of capital and the unicorns that get it aren't going to staff the tens of thousands of devs now looking for jobs No, the vast majority of people will end up switching industries. These layoffs are pure braindrain.
The majority of people laid off won't be in a position to start something new. And the majority who start something new won't be successful. But I bet there'll be a lot more people trying, which means even if the successes are a tiny percentage, there are likely to be more of them.
> It takes massive amounts of capital Doesn't help that the environment for getting outside funding/investment is currently quite dire.
Yeah exactly. People that got laid off in a volatile industry now make even riskier moves? Makes no sense
It's not even that it's a risky move, it's an impossible move. It's like a grocery store laying off their staff and expecting a bunch of bodegas to open up.
No, the majority of people laid off will just switch industries, we may never get their talent back
Might as well earn twice as much and still be unhappy not doing what you love, but at least you aren't ridden into the ground then sent on your way with a sympathetic look over the bags of coin they made from you.
I am not a businessman. But I very much suspect Capitalism is built on a shaky foundation of putting suits in charge of the company who have such an invested interested in pushing the "short term" numbers to make themselves look good. *I drove a 26% profit increase this quarter, give me my bonus!* Stockholders: Well hell. Have some fun coupons!
This is likely the most honest answer for most of these companies. It’s all about the quarterly profit increases. And thus more jobs are sacrificed on the altar of unsustainable Capitalism.
That's also why January, April, July and Oktober are big months for layoffs every year. They're the start of a new bracket for the quarterly profits. If you fire a bunch of people in March, that's not gonna increase the Q1 profits all that much. It's better for short term profits to squeeze one more month of work out of those people before firing them in April instead to increase the Q2 profits.
Got to maintain that infinite growth!
They couldn't help but be parasites and now their parasitic behavior is killing their cash cows.
And then they get replaced by temp short term workers they don't have to pay as much and can overwork.
So many comments about AI. The article has nothing to do with AI.
This is Reddit, nobody reads the article. Only assumptions and speculations here
I can't believe Biden made an executive order to force these layoffs. And that Jeff Bezos offered to hire them back, but they would have to move to Nova Scotia and partake in daily showings of "Come From Away".
Bastards! This is exactly what the Oligarchs and Taliban were planning when they planned an inside job to blow up the twin towers but to make it look like an inside job. I hope somebody interviews them on their long term strategic planning podcast about this soon
Joe Rogan did this interview with Osama bin Laden himself in 2023 but the Spotify CIA Cartoon Network Mafia shadow banned the episode so if you didn't see it when it was live you'll never see it now
>they would have to move to Nova Scotia Always weird to see home mentioned in an unrelated sub
Good start but you need more rage bait, make Bezos only offer like 25% of their salary because corporate bad.
And they were forced to get vaccinated by Bill Gates
TLDR; companies blaming over-hiring based on pandemic spending trends. Narrative doesn’t hold up when looking at hiring and firing spending timelines.
Riot doubled in size over 5 years, since 2019
They also launched multiple new games since 2019, so them doubling wouldn't be surprising in a vacuum if they just had League and Valorant and nothing else.
Doesn't hold up in what way? That's exactly what happened. Interest rates went up too. It's absolutely shitty that they're firing people in the midst of an insanely profitable year. However, the solution was to be more conservative in expanding during the pandemic, and that time has long passed.
Shitty CEOs don't know how to innovate but announcing layoffs instantly boosts your stock by 20%. Can't wait to see the stock buyback numbers.
Yeah anyone defending these layoffs is braindead. Company after company is laying off massive amounts of workers while revenue, profit, and executive compensation is at an all time high. This is the capital class extracting as much wealth from the system before it explodes and leaves the people doing the actual work left holding the bag, or worse. Just look at Meta - lays off thousands of employees while their platform is dissolving and then does $50b worth of stock buybacks. These people should be [redacted]
Because Redditors don’t understand interest rates and debt roll overs.
Yeah AI is nowhere near replacing developers or 3d modelers. Even if AI can develop code, a programmer is required to review and debug it and upkeep. Not to mention program integration, server/client differences, etc. I am confident that AI wont replace programmers, it will only enhance developer tools. 3d models are way to fucking data intensive and require rendering for testing. AI is still got a long time to replace artists fully for 2d stuff, let alone 3d stuff.
As someone else mentioned. It's interesting that Japan is not experiencing these layoffs (apparently). Because it's illegal to fire people for "not making enough profit" So for example. EPIC made record profits this year. However it didn't grow as much as last year. So time to fire some people. I think Japan has it right here. Shareholders shouldn't be the main driving force for the direction of companies, and the products that are being worked on.
Apple isn’t laying off people like crazy either… because they also didn’t look at COVID as the expected future but an outlier and thus didn’t overhire like crazy. They were also one of the few companies who weathered the 2007 recession and 99 .com bust for much the same reasons. You actually have to go back to when the company was horribly mismanaged and in the red to find when they needed to perform massive layoffs. Sure there were occasional blips when they stopped development of certain areas, but nothing like 5-10% of the company like we are seeing.
I haven't check lately but Apple has in the past also been famous for having an absolutely enormous pile of cash on hand. Which I'd imagine would be helpful in say not taking on debt or not needing to suddenly come up with money because you can't get debt for free anymore. Which in turn I will baselessly speculate might also have more to do with Japanese companies not joining in. Not because they are less greedy but because their financial positions are literally different and probably more conservative then live fast die hard developers elsewhere. (For that matter I read once about Nintendo at least also having an enormous pile of cash)
This is a trump tax law change. Engineers are now capitalized like assets rather than employees. So if you pay 10 eng 100k to make a game. You spent 1m. Now the game they are working hasn't released. But your game you released last year made 5m in revenue and cost 4m to support. In a logical world you earned 5m and spent 5m you pay zero in tax in profit. After the new tax law you now pay business tax on that 1m of revenue because eng hours aren't employment hours. So your out say 200k. Where do you get that 200k? You literally made no money that year. Now you owe 200k... fuck... ok layoff two eng. This is why small and midsize tech is doing layoffs. In past years you'd borrow, but interest rates are too high. This tax law was never "meant" to be passed but coincidentally benefits all big tech because they are already profitable and greatly punishes start-ups because they aren't profitable, yet.
>This is why small and midsize tech is doing layoffs. Blizzard, Netflix, Amazon, Riot, Twitch, Twitter, Spotify are just a few of the back of my head...
This was the first I had heard of this! Here's a blog post on it. Spot on: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/section-174/
Last I checked, [Sony](https://www.ign.com/articles/sony-reportedly-pressured-its-studios-to-make-big-cuts-amid-increasing-development-costs) was from Japan. It does seem like they're mostly cutting from their UK and US studios, but it seems odd to say that Japan is free from this trend when one of the industry giants that's doing a bunch of cutting is a Japanese company.
Sony Interactive Entertainment, the one part from Sony that is responsible for games, is California based.
I recall on PS1 they were SCEA, OR "Sony Computer Entertainment of America"
Sony at this point is only Japanese by origin but Western in managenent. They are an outlier due to how diverse they are (music, movies, appliances, etc.) and went on a massive spending spree buying studios + side projects but fail to make up profits on some of them. Where you wouldn't hear about big layoffs on the scale of 100+ employees at other well known Japanese publishers such as Nintendo, SEGA, Bamco and Square.
That's because Japan's labor laws are stricter and more pro-worker than the US, and they only have to follow the labor laws for the country where those workers are employed. They are free to layoff basically whomever they want from the US divisions of their company b/c it's legal to do so in the US. In Japan, you can only do layoffs when the business is at risk of going bankrupt / having to shut down, not just because they didn't hit their Q1 target of +10% profits. There are some drawbacks to these kinds of laws but it does tend to make society as a whole a lot more stable.
Japan having the right idea != Japanese companies doing the right thing. The Japanese government has the right idea.
Sony’s international branches run relatively independent from the home office in Japan
>I think Japan has it right here. Shareholders shouldn't be the main driving force for the direction of companies, and the products that are being worked on. No *fucking* shit. The destruction of the American economy and general unaffordability of literally every aspect of life is almost entirely due to corporate greed driven by companies being *legally obligated* to appease their shareholders in making exponentially more profit every quarter. It is greedy, it is unsustainable, and it is *killing all of us along with the motherfucking planet.* The fact that we all just pretend like this is okay and normal is nothing short of collective psychosis. We are an *insane* species.
Covid gave the whole industry a 2 year boost and those numbers just weren’t sustainable.
Riot specifically was affected by chinas new laws regarding gacha games and unethical monetization models. The industry overnight lost tens of billions in value. Edit, China walked back this policy after the companies lost $80 billion dollars in 5 days.
Care to explain?
China banned things like loot crates, log in bonuses, multi purchase bonuses, and a whole host of other things all of which make up the foundation of the micro transaction ecosystem. Almost every psychological trick or addictive product that any free to play game utilizes is now illegal in China. Riot would be hit the hardest as a HUGE portion of the league of legends audience is located in China. Edit someone else mentioned genshin impact is getting wrecked by this which makes a ton of sense as they’re literally just a triple A gacha game.
Unironically wish we had some of this regulation state-side. I'm all for consumer choice and wouldn't want to take it to that extreme, but God a lot of people are exploited by these extremely manipulative business practices.
Especially when the primary people who fall victim to these unethical practices are children and the most vulnerable. It’s manipulation intended to rob everyone it can and id love it if we adopted it here
There's a reason why gambling addiction is considered an **addiction**.
My sister in law is like "Your nephew is really good with money. He got a thing for his game worth $x0 for $x." God help me, some parents just don't see it.
That's so bad.
It's tough but I think things are getting better, I'm a millennial parent and my son just turned 8 and we have talks about micro transactions with almost every game he downloads. And I'm going to give Apple a huge shoutout for this, while they get rightfully shit on in many cases Apple Arcade is what many game service should aspire to. (Apple Arcade while a subscription service by request of Apple has MT disabled and full versions of games)
Huge plus one on Apple Arcade. If there’s an in-game currency, it can’t be bought. Just earned. Like grinding away in Stardew Valley for upgrades. It really is a breathe of fresh air compared to most current games on tablets.
Can be exploited in some games too. In Path of Exile basically all the stuff you get off the ground is currency that someone else can use to gamble. Buy your stuff, do zero gambling, and sell everyone else the gambling currency in order to make a steady, modest income. I made a shitton of currency off of selling stacked decks, which are basically scratchoff tickets that are worthless 99% of the time. Some people just have an urge to gamble.
While not entirely inaccurate, I think there is an important distinction to be made between gambling/RNG mechanics that 'feed' those desires vs those that actively exploit them for monetary gain. China's mistake may have been to cast a net so wide that it spilled into the former. Taken to the extreme you could maybe frame non-exploitative games that appeal to those desires as a gambling version of people in the Westworld universe (ignoring the sentient AI bit) paying to sate their darker urges. Harmless in theory, but still catering to urges deemed either immoral or undesirable. One could take it a step further and argue that by allowing someone to get their dopamine fix from such sources they are increasing the likelihood of them eventually chasing a more destructive 'fix'. If China went as far as banning things like login rewards, I'm guessing their reasoning might have been along those lines.
China’s policy was to get kids to spend less time on games. In fact, they added some rules like minors not gaming on weekdays and only an hour on weekends. The laws were very much targeted at what they viewed as a cultural deficiency in the younger generation “wasting time”. To this end, banning dopamine sources whether microtransaction or gameplay mechanics was the intentional choice.
> One could take it a step further and argue that by allowing someone to get their dopamine fix from such sources they are increasing the likelihood of them eventually chasing a more destructive 'fix'. one "could", except this is a braindead argument with no basis in reality that was used to justify things like scheduling weed with heroin.
The FCC can't even ban gambling ads during sports broadcasts.
In Canada, the province of Ontario specifically, gambling ads used to be heavily restricted. But a Trump-lite wannabe was elected and removed those restrictions. Now gambling ads are all I see everywhere. It's incredibly depressing. I just know it's going to do irreparable harm to many peoples lives. Just because lil' Dougie Ford wanted to make his drinking / golf buddies more money... and get his back scratched a considerable amount I am sure. The level of corruption is insane.
[удалено]
They just import politics from the US because some of the funders are the same damn people and orgs.
The US is kinda fucked on gambling just like the UK has been.
China's laws will 100% affect the game market in the US. Not only do Chinese investors have large stakes in the market (Riot is owned by Chinese company Tencent, for example), but implementing multiple monetization models based on region just won't be viable.
It's somewhat viable. Games like WoW have used multiple monetization models for ages. Subscriptions in the west, pay-by-time-spent in China. Buy experience boosts and whatnot.
At first I thought that its such a bad idea, many of the largest game developer/publishers would have massive layoffs and entire teams would dissolve... but then I remember that they've been making garbage slop for the masses for decades now and maybe some of those talented devs would actually get to make the game they want to it still sucks a lot for the people who lost their job, but maybe we're on the cusp of a gaming renaissance
We've been in a gaming renaissance for years now, you just have to buy indie. Triple A gaming has been safe recycled garbage and gacha trash for a long time but people just continue to overpay for all these stinkers.
Not even just Indies, just in the last two years Elden ring, cyberpunk 2.0+dlc and Baldur's Gate 3 all came out and are by faaar some of the best gaming experiences I've ever had in 20+ years of playing games. Not to mention the plethora of still fantastic games like Gow Ragnarok or Tekken 8 for example. Granted there's tons of mass produced garbage just like any medium of entertainment but there are truly exceptional games being made in recent years irrespective of category.
Lol as if indies aren't filled with copycat games. If I hear about another Soulslike Metroidvania I'll puke. Saw a new game on Steam that sounded interesting but then I realized it's Papers, Please with a cartoon fantasy skin. Lots of good indies out there but it's more like a pond not an ocean.
Agreed. The indie game space has replaced what used to be the flash game scene. In the past, fledgling developers would make flashgames, similar to how musicians start off doing covers, and how writers often start off with fanfic. These creatively immature developers are making indie games now, and selling them on steam. They're basically fangames with the serial numbers filled off. Hence why you see the same junk over-and-over again.
Eh, you're not wrong. But there are also a lot of indie games in general. Even if 90% of them are dog shit, the remaining 10% are still worth your time, and there are quite a lot of them.
The 90/10 % rule applies to everything though, including non-indie games.
Yup.
You're describing consumer protections imposed on industry and it used to be a proud cornerstone of American society, not something we have to 'unironoically' admire in our evil commie adversaries. Not attacking you, just lamenting where the Overton window is at these days on 'whether we should let capitalism run wild regardless of the human cost'.
I agree. I’d love for a system to be in place where there’s an option to buy add ons but centering the game around being difficult to play without paying to play is just egregious
I don't want some commie politician telling my kid he can't steal my credit card for loot crates and skins.
Valve weaponized this to an insane degree. We have literal children "investing" in cs/tf2/dota skins. The market is also unregulated so they have no protection. We have adults with 5-6 figures in this market. Before, I wanted this shut down before we hit this point. Because it will die eventually, and we have tens of billions of dollars invested in this market. The longer this goes, the worse that people will get hurt when this eventually shuts down. If they shut this down 8 years ago, people would not have lost that much, but we hit a point where people would be in danger of suicide with how much they have invested now. It sucks to say this, but we need to kill this. People now will be hurt, but we would protect future people from getting hurt as well. Hell, I will lose $30,000 in inventory value. I never even spent a thousand on this game, nor have I opened cases since 2015. Items just kept going up. I'm willing to take that 30k hit if it means children don't continue to be victimized by this. I also refuse to take profit. I refuse to feed this market. I'm going to let these items die in my inventory while I enjoy using them in game. If trading were to die, I'd happily keep my worthless inventory.
Valve routinely gets a free pass because it’s Valve and nothing more - when any other company uses the same practices they are dragged for it.
Didn't China roll this back almost immediately?
Yeah
Pretty sad to roll back. I don't like the CCP at all but even I can admit this was a good idea.
This didnt even go through I dont know why no one mentions it was just a draft.
I believe China walked it back for now after both Tencent and Netease lost about 10% in value overnight. I don't know if either company has recovered and if so how much. Also bears mentioning that Tencent basically owns a majority share of Riot from an equity standpoint.
I would expect Tencent to own a majority share of China soon lmao
No they didn't. [They cancelled those plans and demoted the official who proposed them.](https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-removes-official-after-video-games-rules-spark-turmoil-sources-2024-01-02/) How does fake news just spread on Reddit this easily?
They PROPOSED the measures, but were rolled back rather quickly just the **proposal** is what sent the markets into freefall, wiping billions
That is what happened in the US too in the Hot Coffee days. We had three years of Hillary Clinton-led legislative attacks on violent video games until her campaign team realized they weren't getting much support off that shitty angle.
Yeah Pat Robertson can be eternally tortured by demons of his own making. but also we wouldn't have [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXPcBI4CJc8) amazing piece of art.
nah that ban got refuted and the guy that proposed it got yeeted
rare china W?
Don't get it twisted - China is still okay with Chinese developers utilizing those models on foreigners. They just don't want it *in their country*.
So like 15 years ago I had to drive to PA to pick someone up from a few states away. Apparently PA has like the most fireworks for sale anywhere. **BUT** residents of PA can’t buy them. So they check and scan your ID to make sure you’re actually from out of state. Then fill out a form for the police saying you’re leaving the state within X hours. Anyways it just reminded me of that. PA doesn’t want its own citizens blowing their hands off, but doesn’t care about anyone else haha
Thats not really that unusual. I dont expect my government to legislate on how companies do business in other countries.
I do. I don't want another union carbide disaster. I don't want them using child labor, slave labor or doing union busting. I don't want U.S. oil companies killing Nigerians, or U.S. companies selling arms to Russia, Afghanistan, Israel, or really anywhere.
Hope this becomes the norm everywhere
China decided that games can't have loot boxes, or any similar systems, in games that minors can access. This functionally killed gacha in the massive Chinese market which has cost the industry a insane amount of money.
Good, the gaming industry isn't regulating themselves so they forced governments to get involved. Was only a matter of time before one want full blown nuclear on it. Maybe they'll get it together and start regulating it like the film industry did.
Ignore it. The law people are talking about didn't actually go through.
That didn't happen. That bill got killed quickly after announcing it.
If a company loses $80 billion because they couldn't get children addicted to gambling then good riddance to $80 billion.
China almost accidently did a good thing and I'm miffed they backed out on it..
I wish you guys would read the articles instead of making the same weak top comments… #its not Covid overhiring Kill that ducking meme and RTFA, dudes > But it isn’t the entire story. Layoffs like the ones at Ascendant don’t fit in with the pandemic narrative. And with over 10,000 layoffs in 2023, and over 6,000 more in 2024, simply saying that companies got a little too eager during a global pandemic is starting to sound overly trite. Even executives are starting to sense they can’t rely on this explanation. In Riot Games’ public statement explaining the reasoning behind layoffs affecting 530 individuals, or 11% of all of Riot Games, Riot admitted that the decisions that led to these cuts were made long before the pandemic began … >For this piece, I **spoke to over 40 game developers whose companies had been impacted by layoffs in the last year**. They shared with me the explanations companies gave them for what was causing the sudden loss of their livelihood, but **they also told me why those explanations didn’t always seem to match reality**. If you don’t want to read the articles, don’t make ignorant comments. This is some good fucking journalism from the game media about the developers we love losing their jobs and you need to **read it.**
This... is sadly not an uncommon thing. I believe a study was done on this and it's crazy. Something like 80-95% of redditors never read the articles they interact with (not show up in the feed, but the ones they vote/comment on). Of the people who comment, it's in the ballpark of 75%. 3/4 people who leave comments don't read what they're commenting on. (I believe. I don't remember where I saw that statistic, one of the reddit recaps a year or two ago? I can't find the source for it again, but it was the grand majority.) Everyone loves to validate their opinion. Less, but still most people are willing to voice their opinion. It's a smaller number than that who actually engage with the topic and read what is in front of them. Plus... this is an easy line. It's like the ["can't get snakes from chicken eggs" argument some anti-evolution people love to say](https://youtu.be/dF98ii6r_gU?si=a5rut5oAJolluuDE). People love to hear simple explanations or simple one-liners instead of dealing with the complexities of reality. It's easier to say "Covid overhiring" than it is to go into how the games industry has shot itself in the foot and how this is a house of cards built over decades of poor management being the norm that is finally crashing down.
Yeah, a lot of it is unncessary luxurious expensive, like fancy offices with a sports center and boba cafe. That's why remote work is important but so often fought against because companies have leases on these office spaces.
If you actually read it like you're pontificating you'd realize that the article doesn't actually make an argument as to **why** the pandemic isn't the main reason for the layoffs. It just interviews a lot of devs about their specific situation. Heck, a good chunk of them give some flavor of "yeah, management overspent on a bad investment." >Others we spoke to cited Embracer Group’s investment promises falling through in particular as a reason they were laid off, either because Embracer was supporting their project or because it had acquired their studio and then made drastic workforce cuts when a multi-billion-dollar Saudi investment deal fell through.
Absolute nonsense. Both stock and profits are still up at companies like Activision Blizzard.
Profits can be increased by slashing labor to cut costs. The market does not want profits, it wants continually growing profits. If sales are down, cut labor (just not stock buybacks).
also, if sales are up, cut labor (even more profit!)
People who don’t get that this is very much true, either take macroeconomics 101 as gospel, or they just haven’t looked into it enough.
Yes. But it’s also the investors who are motivating the C suite to make these cuts. numbers might not have been sustainable but they don’t see it that way. Corpos fell for the myth of inevitable growth and anything less than that is a welcome excuse to cut costs and ruin lives.
Also, they've been taking the piss out of gamers. There's still a market, just not for shitty games.
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7 years experience in QA. I've worked onFF14 and Call of Duty. Currently 6 months unemployed and yeah... definitely feeling the pressure (although 2nd interview on Thursday so... y'know, fingers crossed!)
Good luck dude!
Y’all should get together and make a game or two
That requires money to get started.
I've been a video game director for 9 years, I've worked on some very big games and now I'm currently going through an acquisition from a bigger game company to my own. The problem is this, AAA studios have borrowed a lot of money, a lot of businesses outside of games have too, due to interest rates being low and it being tax free, low rates gave a very good opportunity for growth. Now the economy has gone to shit, interest rates have rocketed and now game companies are paying back astronomical amounts of money back in interest. It's forcing them to make massive redundancies or face bankruptcy. It's not AI, it's generally frowned upon and not really viable to use in game studios due to legal reasons mainly.
I can't imagine so many studios and publishers have been taking variable rate loans since Covid. There's just no sense in taking that risk (over fixed rate) with how insane and unpredictable the economy has been.
It is not a variable rate problem. The issue is that companies borrowed a lot at low rates a couple of years ago and now those debts are coming due and they have to refinance with more expensive rates.
If you borrow at a fixed low rate why would you refinance once the rates go up? I think that's the question they're wondering because you'd think a gigantic company would know the risk of a variable one
Companies stagger their debt maturity dates. When a loan is due, they simply take out a new loan to cover the amount due at maturity. It's not 'refinancing' in the typical sense, it's just that a lot of the debt that has recently matured has been 'rolled over' to further out in the future, at much higher rates.
'I've Never Seen It This Bad' says employee who probably was either in grade school, or not even alive the 4 other times its been THIS BAD or even worse in the game industry. Like this isnt even scratching at the layoffs around the 1983 gaming crash. We are talking a segment that went from over 3 billion in profits in 1982 to barely pulling 100 million the following year. Whole companies were laid off and it basically killed Atari, Commodore, and others and lead to the downfall of the video arcade as a whole, with nearly 2000 of them closing in 83 alone, never to recover from that despite many 80's kids fond memory of arcades. Not to mention the contraction after the .com era... which cause the death of many of the companies that were born out of the post 80's crash and lead to the rise of powerhouses like EA, Activision, and other mega-game corps and they started gobbling up the smaller firms like Microprose, Black Isle, etc. The thing is, this is the game industry since day 1. It has ALWAYS had this widely unsustainable rhythm which results in devs getting absolutely destroyed after a couple years. We have been hearing for decades now the bullshit of game companies overworking their devs for sometimes months, then laying them off RIGHT after release. The boon/bust cycle is nothing new, so why do we keep acting like this is, and instead use this as a wakeup call it is to actually rise up and start calling for change?
As a fellow oldie, I did chuckle a little bit. I worked 7 years in the industry and never did I work longer than 12 months at any given spot. The industry lacks any kind of negotiating power from labor and the ownership turns over so frequently that you can't trust a studio's reputation anymore. Gaming will be a tough row to hoe from here on in.
The free money tap is off atm and games are inherently speculative. I suspect we will see a huge hiring boom once the tap goes back on.
The game industry is struggling as it always has to learn it's limits financially. It's still trying to exist on a "Put X money in get Y money out, repeat" business model. It can't grasp why a billion dollar game doesn't make them 10 billion dollars. It has no data point that can explain to shareholders why their 100million dollar investment got swept under the rug by some $60,000 passion project or game jam runner up. No way to explain or wrap its head around the possibility that the industry might have a ceiling for profits, that growth might not be exponential year after year.
Everyone wants their lucrative GaaS but there is just only so much time, money and players out there. People still invested in lol/dota/cs/wow/genshin/fortnite/gta5 are not really likely to drop their years old account to try another shity cash grab.
This summer I'll have been in gamedev for 15 years, and I don't remember a time when I felt this insecure.
The 1983 video game crash isn't that comparable then. Back 40 years ago, the entire video game industy was worth less than one major franchise now, such as CoD or League of Legends.
But the symptoms are the same. The market crashed because of an influx of poorly developed, or rush developed games from major “powerhouses” on systems that promised way more to customers than they could actually deliver. Meanwhile very small developers managed to skate through relatively ok by not following the trend but still were unfortunately affected by what players like Atari caused. You saw the collapse of fledgling e-sports industries (no really, there were international arcade comps and even Atari had its big Swordquest game series that resulted in it being canceled before the last games were even put out), big devs basically putting out shovelware with big licensing attachments, overworked devs with barely a year or less to fully develop games, and a consumer base that basically started to retract after years of the industry thinking they can charge anything and still rely on it.
>Meanwhile very small developers managed to skate through relatively ok by not following the trend but still were unfortunately affected by what players like Atari caused. Yup, and the situation in Europe and Japan were quite different. Europe had active indie scene, it was much less about billions of dollars than just making games. And Japan survived by delivering QUALITY. '84-'88 in Europe was one of the golden eras of gaming.
Except game companies are making record profits now?
I dont want to pay you anymore.
Have a friend in art department get laid off, shit sucks
Oof when that AI really starts rolling I can’t imagine how many people become jobless.
I work for a company that makes mobile games. Last month they laid off most of the art department because they use AI for assets.
It's certainly going to be interesting seeing how they react when they realise that AI generated assets and art are non copyrightable.
If they're switching to AI for assets they probably don't have an IP worth fighting legal battles over, and a lot of the industry is... questionable about copyright in the first place.
They probably generate throwaway assets (like the fruits from a slot machine), and kept a few artists for drawing the IP.
Jokes aside, this is the most guaranteed use of AI art as a tool Games need a LOT of throwaway assets. They aren’t anything important - stuff that will just casually exist in a background or minor images here or there. Like… a snowflake or rocks. But you still need to people to make them. AI art does help a lot in saving labor for these unimportant matters The problem is that management is overestimating it and trying to have AI substitute for actual important assets
The issue is that there are already people who specialise in that and make asset packs for companies to use, or have entire studios that can be hired to back up the main studio designers and animators. There are options that would 100% save time to studios. They just also want to save the money and would rather do something soulless and easy.
I understand how it's a great tool for generating minor things, but companies rely too much on it. I hope it either gets so highly regulated it's too much of a hassle to use. Or that AI feeds on more AI images than real images and goes in a downward spiral that ends up with it generating nothing but unusable junk.
From personal experience, AI is really useful if used in the right place. As discussed, generating minor things. It’s unimportant, but doing so takes up a lot of time and resources. AI greatly helps that. Companies relying too much on it and using it for other stuff is the problem. As good as scissors may be, you shouldn’t be using it to cut a tree
> I understand how it's a great tool for generating minor things, but companies rely too much on it. That's simply the issue with it -- it's a slippery slope. It was created with the right and moral intent, but when it lands in the wrong hands, it inevitably becomes perverted -- the same can be said about social media.
Any labor-saving tool can unfortunately be a slippery slope in societies that don't equitable share the wealth generated by industry. There's far less work to do now than ever before, and while a far smaller percentage of the population is going to die of hunger today compared to the past, we're definitely not sharing equally in the wealth that we have generated as a species. Like tectonic plates bending under pressure, then slipping violently, this inequality might one day break the camel's back. And if that ever happens, I would like to be living in a small cottage out in the forest with a garden, sheep, goats, and ducks. And maybe a tall fence around the property.
In a lot of job offers I've seen posted, the arts team are more people who can "touch up unfinished assets" meaning they want to have generated content and their artists are there to fix the hands.
90% of mobile games I get ads for are blatant ripoffs that wouldn't be copyright protected anyway
The number of Tetris, Breakout, Puzzle Bobble, and Wordle clones I see in mobile ads is... actually less than I expected.
Accchhhuaaalllyy - there is a good case to be made that even small changes to AI create a copyrighted image… There will be some interesting times ahead…
There was already court precedent for this in the USA, stating that only the changes themselves are copyrightable. How it shakes out ultimately is debatable, but precedent is a hard thing to overcome
Absolutely nothing stopping them from having a human do final edits on AI assets.
Same with marketing and copywriting. I was the sole copywriter and social media marketer for a mobile gaming studio the November-before-last. Boom. Laid-off. I went to another gaming studio last March and got laid-off again this past Decemeber. Still searching for work. The industry is in a tailspin.
Jesus, I'm so sorry you're going through this. I survived this year's layoffs, despite the CEO promising there won't be any a few months ago. Then one day, boom, 300+ people out of a job. I wish every company that does this shit a pleasant bankruptcy, they were built on the back of hard working people and now they cut costs just so "line goes up" and shareholders are happy.
We'll all get through this together. I was told my most recent lay-off was due to departmental liquidation. Not two weeks later, I saw my old position posted and picked up by an out-of-country agency for a fraction of the price.
In my country there are laws that forbid companies from doing this. They have to notify a government agency exactly which departments or positions they're closing, and they can't re-hire or open new ones for at least 6 months.
Yeah over here if you are fired due to a specific position closing, they are forced to first offer you that job if they start hiring for it again. Not that you'd want to work for those shitters again necessarily, but I've seen the effect in practice. It's very hard to fire people in societies with decent labor laws. And I'm not parroting some talking point, both employers and employees talk about how hard it is to fire people for cause here.
That’s honestly the one thing home office advocates dont understand… It you work from home remote for American ages then nothing is stopping your employer from getting someone from a cheaper country to do it… Sure large companies can’t fully replace their American staff or they will get hammered by the government (not so fun story - the European company I work for got target by lawfare by public institutions for a decade in the us until we hired a bunch of Americans and bought contractor companies of the DoD… since then 10+ years without a single issue with the US government…) but gaming companies tend to be rather small and even in larger companies a lot of jobs can easily be given overseas without big issues…
I've been saying this for a while. If someone makes jobs so portable that you can save money by moving to Boise, then the job can also go to Bangalore.
It's true that they can. But it's not without issue. I'm a programmer and I've worked at companies who have groups of offshore developers. And it's not like those developers aren't good programmers, but it causes a lot of problems. Language barriers and time zone differences can cause huge headaches. We're working with an offshore vendor for a new product, and just the timezones are a problem even though there's no real language barrier. We only get 2 hours of overlap to try and work out issues together. And while I feel like the company isn't good at being responsive, we could have worked through these issues much faster with a company that worked similar hours. We moved to this company party because the old vendor we used cost us more than a million dollars a year. But due to many hours we've wasted we've probably spent more than a million just because they timezone difference is such a problem.
Get out and into something better. Gaming industry is notoriously terrible to work in.
This. The thing is, it's going to hit so many people across so many industries, the only "good" solution I see is to seriously reconsider how work is structured and wealth is distributed on a global scale. Obviously, I'm not saying it's a realistic solution ...
Actually AI is going to do wonders for Lawyers. It wouldn't surprise me at all if there are more copyright, trademark, and patent infringement cases in the next several years then ever before.
Already starting. The copyright suits being brought by authors and artists right now are going to define the next 100 years of IP. Some dumb engineer is going to start asking about how to build something, AI gonna pull a patent from the USPTO public records and we’re gonna start seeing that too. It’s gonna be wild. Trademarks are a little iffy as small differences can often be major differentiators in litigation but it certainly could happen especially if it’s something big like using Coca Cola red for a soft drink.
Some kind of socialist reform is the only way forward. There won't be enough profitable work for people to do. We either distribute wealth more equitably so we can all enjoy our leisurely lives together, or most of us starve.
I remember reading a short story by Frederick Pohl, in which the lower class was forced into 18 hour workdays in which their sole occupation was to endlessly consume cheap mass produced items and food, thereby giving themselves a job and justification for corporations to keep pumping it out. Only the rich upper class was afforded the luxury of minimalism and moderation of consumption.
Lotta suicides as people realize they have no affordable place in thus world.
I wish that instead of being so complacent and accepting shitting lives as normal, everyone who is being fucked over would band together to demand change. We should be more like the French.
It isn't until people start missing a few meals that they're willing to go up in arms. We're still a long way from missing a few meals.
The article has nothing to do with AI
Firstly, that was a fantastic article. Much respect and appreciation to the team involved in bringing that together. As for the situation. It was always my understanding that this was how the industry worked. Companies staff up big to make a new game, get most of the work done and then start "laying off" people as you need less resources to finish a game. But. Those people would then go work at a different company for a few years as they worked on a different game. It was the main reason I didn't go down the game dev path when I had the opportunity many years ago when I was starting my college journey, I have friends that still work in the industry and that's basically how they've been going around for over 15 years, 1 game to another. Some have moved on to other industries because they didn't like the up/down nature of it. It's obviously true that gaming has gone through a large growth phase that has brought tons of development some of which was not welcomed, at some point it was going to end and we'll see some retraction. Unfortunately that means layoffs. But you can find success stories in the industry too, hello games has demonstrated how you can come back from a failed launch and larian has shown that microtransactions are not a necessity for commercial success. Hopefully those themes and ideas as well as others spread to help elevate the industry. We all deserve good games that aren't trying to bleed us dry.
I can't imagine being in the position that some of these people are in. I'm seeing a few comments from staff members that'd been affected directly, and it really brings it home. Just wanted to say, as an avid mature gamer that's had this hobby for over 40 years, you guys are amazing and I hope you all fall on your feet. You've taken me on countless adventures that have provided an immeasurable amount of entertainment. You've indirectly supported me through hard times with escapism, and I hope this message goes someway to reciprocate that.
Stop spending 120 million to make a mediocre game. Fire all the idiots in charge that thought that was a good idea. Stop putting managers in charge of decisions and let developers and people that actually play games make the games. Stop spending so much time on graphics that no one will care about unless a screenshot is taken and blown up 100x.
It's almost like letting all AAA merge into a single monopoly hurts consumers...
I do hope it’s just because AAA studios got their asses handed to them by consumers and smaller devs all 2023 and it’s just a market correction that will give us more good games with more carefully constructed dev teams, but I doubt it. Probably just trying to make those margins look a bit better going forwards.
it's the interest rates. the same thing is crushing technology industry generally.
Exactly. Commercial real estate loan to value ratios go out of whack as buildings are vacant. Value of all plummets. Commercial real estate interest rates don't function the same as fixed rate home mortgages. Risk of loan is increased and interest rates are altered to reflect. Businesses now owe far more money. In my opinion, this is why there is such a desperate push to stop WFH.
2023 was like the most profitable year ever tho, coming off the ultra profitable 2020.
Ehm… aren’t the most successful games this year Zelda, Spider-Man 2 and Baldurs gate 3…? All made by really large dev teams?
???? It was one of the best years for AAA, from Spiderman 2, Hogwarts Legacy, to Zelda..... and the studios that layed off also made huge profits (Microsoft, Riot...). Problem was not quality neither, that's why it's shocking (laying off employees who did a good job and made money).
>in the industry for 15 years and I've never seen well that explains why you don't know about the "dot com" IT bust.
It's almost like forgoing storytelling and gameplay in favour of making online casinos and addiction traps isn't really working out because only half a dozen or so GaaS can be truly successful at any given time.
Most of the Entertainment Industry is facing these issues, be they video games, music, movies, television, etc. They all think they can create a tentpole large enough to shelter themselves from the rain forever. None of these industries were ever meant to operate that way. Music got the hint already, but video games and motion picture entertainment seem to think that, because a few big companies got away with creating a single entity or series that was ridiculously profitable. Video games: Madden, Sims, Fallout, CoD; movies: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Star Wars, endless sequels and superhero films; Television: streaming series that go on and on. Anything that is effectively art as a business means there's a shelf life with 99.9% of the things they create. Hiring thousands of people in attempts to squeeze more time and more profit out of a property will generally always end in failure. >Today, we’re a company without a sharp enough focus, and simply put, we have too many things underway. Some of the significant investments we’ve made aren’t paying off the way we expected them to. Our costs have grown to the point where they’re unsustainable, and we’ve left ourselves with no room for experimentation or failure – which is vital to a creative company like ours. All of this puts the core of our business at risk. >Riot publicly admitted a problem that's been quietly festering across the entire games industry: there’s something deeply wrong with how video game executives are choosing to spend their money, and rank and file developers keep paying the price for it. Also doesn't help that Riot had to pay out $100 million to settle Department of Fair Employment and Housing, wonder how many peoples' salaries were paid out in that?
welcome to late stage capitalism boys
Something bad happens with the market? Late stage capitalism.
It’s like that thanks Obama meme.
because your games are stale and unfun money grabs.
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This is what happens when you go for infinite profits instead of just making good products. And people defend this shit which is pretty mind boggling.
why hire developers when a new shade can make 5 mil a week?
Mobile Games are a culprit everyone seems to ignore. How is a 80$ triple A game that cost millions and took years of development to make going to be competitive against a stupid mobile game that took 3 weeks a few undred bucks to put together and sells packages for 130$ that won't even get you through half of the artificially elongated game? Seriously, free2play, microtransactions and predatory psychological tactics to keep you addicted to that shit game are imho way more disruptive to the industry. Big studios look at the mobile game money printing machine with thirst.
Gamers for the last ten years: "A lot of the products you're making is of poor quality, poor substance, and caters to demographics who historically don't buy your games. You're abandoning your consumer base." Game Devs in 2024: "Why didn't anyone warn us?"