One-Third of US Video Game Industry Workers Were Laid Off Over the Last Two Years, GDC Study Reveals (variety.com)
- Reference: 0180701768
- News link: https://games.slashdot.org/story/26/01/30/1825216/one-third-of-us-video-game-industry-workers-were-laid-off-over-the-last-two-years-gdc-study-reveals
- Source link: https://variety.com/2026/gaming/news/one-third-video-game-workers-laid-off-2025-1236644512/
> One-third of U.S. video game industry workers say they were [1]laid off over the past two years , according to a new survey conducted by the organizers behind the newly revamped Game Developers Conference (GDC). Based on responses from more than 2,300 gaming industry professionals, with surveys "customized for each participant group, ensuring that developers, marketers, executives, investors and others answered questions most relevant to them," the 2026 State of the Game Industry Report found that 33% of respondents in the U.S. were laid off in the past two years.
AI use has grown to 36% of respondents, but sentiment has turned sharply negative: 52% now believe generative AI is harming the industry, compared to 30% last year and 18% in 2024. On the labor front, 82% of US respondents support unionization for game workers, and 62% said they're not in a union but interested in joining one. No respondents between 18 and 24 years old opposed unionization.
[1] https://variety.com/2026/gaming/news/one-third-video-game-workers-laid-off-2025-1236644512/
About to start their own businesses (Score:4, Insightful)
That is what I would do if I and 5 of my coworkers were fired from a high tech buiness.
Re: (Score:2)
Steam is already saturated by low-quality cheap games. There are multiple strata of indie games, and the lowest stratum is by far the largest.
AI powered tools will make it even easier for the video-game equivalent of "garage bands" to churn out slop and try to make a buck on it on steam. But regardless of what that might mean for our ability to find good games on the platform, it also means that the overwhelming majority of indie game developers won't be able to make a living doing it. They will be lucky
Makes sense, why hasn't it happened? (Score:2)
Everything you said sounds true. I believe it. I think you're fully right I just haven't seen it. Surely if there are 200 AI slop games, at least one would be popular, interesting, or possibly even good? Where's the breakout hit from a studio that leveraged AI to have a small team create something wonderful? (more a criticism of the state of AI than your original point, admittedly)
Re: (Score:2)
the aaa segment has also been saturated with minimum value for a while. i can't say what the impact of ai is/will be, it will likely be some, but i think the real underlying trend here is plain old market saturation. gaming has been going mainstream and soaring for more than two decades, covid provided an extra circumstantial boost that isn't there anymore and it seems the market is hitting its limits (combined with consumer confidence taking a hit). i would expect natural selection doing its thing now.
ai d
A little late. (Score:3)
Gondor lit the beacons before it was under siege, because to do so after is far, far too late.
For the IT industry to start speculating AFTER it has lost a third of its workforce is to start debating whether to light the beacons only after a third of the city is taken.
This is a crisis that has been expected for a very long time. Long enough for you to have experience in fighting the bean counters. Sorry, but this is a mess of your own making. In more ways than one.
1. AI is good at a few basic tasks, but it is not good at being innovative or fresh. Nor is it ever going to be capable of being so, because you can't have the future in the training set. So regurgitating a few simple themes repeatedly was never going to be in the interests of humans, only in the interests of accountants (most of whom seem to have used the daleks and cybermen as a training manual on conduct) and short-term profits. Accountants don't care if a company goes belly-up, they work many accounts, so short-term profits (even if it causes medium-term collapse) are all that matter.
2. AI cannot write decent code. How could it - it was trained on Stack Overflow and abandoned github projects. But this only matters if the humans bother themselves to write reliable code. You can replace one bug-ridden pile of carp with another without users caring too much.
3. AI cannot write tightly-optimised code. But, then, I doubt most humans ever bothered to learn that skill, when they could simply instruct the user to install more RAM and a beefier CPU.
Re: (Score:2)
Most game developers can't write good code either. A friend used to write 3D drivers and had to put in various workarounds for the crappy code in so many games asking the driver to do really dumb things which slashed performance.
This is why these days they typically rely on the good developers writing engines that they license.
And then we have the numerous flops where developers decided pushing politics was more important than making a good game. If they were even capable of doing so in the first place.
Cool-sounding jobs not so cool (Score:2)
I've long thought that the cool-sounding jobs that you thought you wanted as a teenager tend to be the worst jobs. Video game designer/programmer is top of that list. It's been an industry with abysmal job security and low pay relative to skillset for a very long time.
Re: (Score:2)
Cue the constant refrain: "but having a job making games is it's OWN reward!" LOL
Re: (Score:2)
> I've long thought that the cool-sounding jobs that you thought you wanted as a teenager tend to be the worst jobs.
When I was a kid, I dreamed about someday writing accounting applications.
The problem isn't AI... (Score:2)
... the problem is that most of the stuff put out by the big studios lately has been garbage. Most of the developers responsible for those flops *deserve* to get fired, because they are ass at game dev. Good riddance. Now maybe we can get some good games.
Re: (Score:2)
It's garbage because big game studios (i.e. the project leads & management) are so risk averse they regress to a mean - new thing has to be like the old thing. And that message is hammered into the people there making the code, artwork, music, plot etc. I don't expect any firings of people who deserve to be fired, just those creating content in the narrow confines they're allowed. If things were bad before then AI slop will make them worse. Hopefully a major studio relying on slop will go bust and the o
Similar to the music and movie industry... (Score:2)
... the way towards mass-produced, low quality products is kind of inevitable. Apart from a few artists that are diligent and talented and lucky enough to reach some substantial audience, most of all games will be just abysmal slop, just like most music and most movies produced these days are. And there is plenty of audience for such stuff.
And the cycle continues (Score:2)
Early games were made by people who loved games, and they made a lot of money
Then game studios got taken over by artless mercenaries who focused on increasing microtransactions, loot boxes and other sneaky ways to harvest revenue
Add to that consultants that mutated games into political statements and it's easy to see why the industry is in trouble
the problem? (Score:3)
the problem is industry consolidation. Why have two dev teams making two games when one game will cannibalize sales for other game you are making. These layoffs are the promised efficiency of mergers and acquisitions. Much better to just make one game and sell twice as many copies.
We'll only be able to afford to play Tux Racer (Score:2, Interesting)
Too late. We're installing a sycophant into the Federal Reserve. An economic depression that knocks the US out of the global economy for at least a decade is coming. We've chased immigrants, including technical workers, out of this country. It almost doesn't matter that the [1]US is trying to curtail visas for skilled workers [nytimes.com], the demand for those visa is also plummeting.
If you want a reliable job in gaming, you need to pack your bags and leave the US. That's going to be your only option in the near future. Th
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/27/us/texas-immigrants-h1b-visas.html