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Layoffs in video games are actually a massacre of studios

2 months ago babelfish

Layoffs in video games are actually a massacre of studios

2024 is presenting a new phenomenon linked to the crisis in the video game industry: no longer "simple" layoffs but a real massacre of development studios. The market isn't growing, it's true, but the sector still generates billions. And there are those who blame the advance of AI. What happens?

It is now clear to everyone, even to those who reduced the 2023 layoffs to a physiological consequence after the boom of the pandemic (more people at home and the disappearance of all outdoor hobbies has undeniably translated into golden business for the industry of entertainment) that the phenomenon actually has pathological characteristics. And the recent layoffs at Sony prove it: the console sells, it has defeated the competition represented by the Xbox Series The sirens of artificial intelligence, then, which allows games to be created while saving on time and budget (now it is not just a mere fear of developers regarding their fate: this was confirmed by the CEO of EA , one of the largest software houses, from capitalization of around 36 billion dollars), are contributing to an unprecedented massacre of studios that until the day before yesterday were creating beautiful video games.

DON'T CALL THEM LAYOFFS: THE MASSACRE OF VIDEO GAME STUDIOS

Precisely what happened around PlayStation Studios allows us to understand the new phenomenon. Because in the other crises that the industry has gone through, as in almost all sectors, it was the small companies that fared the worst, while – with some exceptions – the larger ones had broad enough shoulders to weather the storm.

Except that the explosion of budgets to create works that are ever more beautiful to look at (it doesn't mean that they are also ever more fun to play), with increasingly larger and more detailed worlds (it is now almost impossible to reach the end credits and, at the same time, having visited the entire virtual map available), is leading to painful cuts even in the major labels.

It happened in Insomniac Games ( in this regard, the same software house spoke on on the opposite front, in Microsoft , which after the 10 thousand redundancies in 2023 began the year with cuts that affected around 2 thousand people.

WHICH VIDEOGAME SOFTWARE HOUSES HAVE BEEN AFFECTED BY THE LAYOFFS?

EA, whose CEO allowed himself to be seduced by AI, has fired MLB Tap Sports and F1 Mobile Racing in the EA Sports teams.

That these are not simple layoffs but a real massacre of video game studios is also demonstrated by the fact that Electronic Arts has closed Ridgeline Games, the single player Battlefield studio. A few weeks earlier, Marcus Lehto , also known for being one of the creators of Halo at the time of Bungie, had passed away.

Same scenario also in independent labels: with the excuse of the change of location Cloud Imperium Games (CIG), the development studio of Star Citizen , sent some of the staff home . Among those fired are some key people of the project such as Todd Papy , game director, Dan Truffin , QA Manager Vincent Sinatra and level designer Dave Kubicka .

Start Magazine had talked about it a few months ago as during 2023 Cloud Imperium Games managed to raise another 117.5 million dollars which bring the total to a figure that should now be well above the fateful half a billion (there is who talks about 660 million dollars). The game has not yet been completed, the money is pouring in, the audience of gamers is expanding and yet the team is becoming thinner.

Riot Games, the home of the highly successful League of Legends and Valorant , has laid off 530 people, or 11% of its staff. “For most of our history, we have managed to avoid days like these, but this decision is fundamental for the future of Riot,” explained the Los Angeles label but subsidiary of the Chinese Tencent Holdings since 2015.

ALSO AN ITALIAN INVOLVED

The layoffs in the world of video games have also proved to be a massacre of studios for the Italian 505 Games of Digital Bros. SpA. Shutters closed in Spain, France and Germany. In this case we are not talking about developers but, mostly, marketing and communications personnel. However, let's not forget that last autumn Digital Bros announced layoffs to cut 30% of its workforce between 505 Games, DR Studios ( Monopoly Tycoon, Terraria ) and Kunos Simulazioni ( Assetto Corsa ).

Deck Nine Games, the studio responsible for the peculiar Life is Strange: True Colors , as well as co-author of The Expanse: A Telltale Series , announced cuts at the end of February that will affect 20% of the total staff. According to estimates by the US industry publication IGN, we are talking about 100 – 130 people in total.

In late February, Bloomberg wrote about layoffs within the UK team Supermassive, responsible for horror video games such as Until Dawn, The Quarry and The Dark Pictures Chronicles . The internal reorganization would concern 30% of the workforce, equivalent to approximately 90 people made redundant. However, the rumors about the reduction of staff at Daybreak Games, the DC Universe Online studio, have not been confirmed.

The massacre of video game studios is also worsening among the smaller names: not just "simple" layoffs in Die Gute Fabrik, the Danish label behind Saltsea Chronicles, Where Is My Heart?, Sportsfriends and Mutazione , which has announced bankruptcy , having not found new financiers: the shutters will remain up just long enough to complete the updates of the available titles, after which the name seems destined to disappear from the scene.

However, cuts to survive do not always concern those at the bottom. In fact, sometimes even friends fail, like Starbreeze, who has yet to recover from the recent defeat of Payday 3 . Probably for this reason he announced that he had removed Tobias Sjögren from the role of CEO. In his place, the company will be led temporarily by Juergen Goeldner, who previously led Focus Home Interactive.

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/licenziamenti-videogiochi-studi-sviluppo/ on Thu, 14 Mar 2024 06:17:21 +0000.