12 Days Into 2024 And 2700+ Video Game Layoffs Have Been Announced
Within the last few years, video game industry layoffs have unfortunately become more commonplace. In 2023, we saw near-weekly layoffs across the entire industry. When the dust had settled, at least 6,000 jobs across publishers, developers, and other video game-related companies had happened. Sadly, it appears 2024 will outpace that, if the first few weeks of the year are any indication.
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Most folks didnât expect 2024 to be much better, but Iâm not sure anyone was ready for it to be possibly worseâyet this year has kicked off with a string of big and small layoffs signaling that the corporate bloodletting rituals arenât ending anytime soon. So Kotaku is going to try and track all of 2024âs layoffs as they happen. Hopefully, we donât have to update this post that much.
Archiact – UnknownOn January 4, 2024, the first round of video game layoffs (that we know of) happened at VR games developer Archiact. The company, known for its Doom 3 VR port, announced on social media that it had laid off an unspecified number of staff.
âWe are working with these individuals to offset this difficult transition as much as possible, including through reverse recruiting,â said the studio in its announcement post.
Bossa Studios – 19 peopleThis technically happened in late 2023, but was reported and confirmed on January 5, 2024. According to Gameindustry.biz, 19 people were cut from the studio. The layoffs were mostly QA and production roles as well as some non-UK employees.
Unity Software – 1,800 peopleOn January 8, 2024, Reuters reported the first truly massive round of layoffs for the year as Unity confirmed that it planned to cut nearly 25% of its staff as part of a continued âresetâ at the company. This is reportedly the largest round of layoffs in the software companyâs history and it will be completed by the end of March.
Twitch – 500 peopleOn January 9, 2024, Bloomberg reported that Twitch was preparing to lay off 500 employees by the end of January. This is about 35% of its total staff. The Amazon-owned video game streaming website previously laid off hundreds of employees last year in March and later in October.
Playtika – 300-400 peopleAs reported by CTech on January 11, 2024, mobile game publisher and developer Playtika plans to lay off up to 400 employees, or about 10% of the companyâs total workforce. Playtika previously laid off 900 employees in 2022. In 2023, the company agreed to pay up to $300 million to acquire Innplay Labs, another mobile developer.
Discord – 170 peopleThe Verge reported on January 11, 2024 that popular video game chat software developer Discord was planning to lay off around 17% of the companyâs total staff. The layoffs were announced in an all-hands meeting and an internal memo obtained by The Verge. CEO Jason Citron explained in the memo that the company had grown âquicklyâ since 2020 and took on too many projects.
âToday, we are increasingly clear on the need to sharpen our focus and improve the way we work together to bring more agility to our organization,â Citron told employees in the memo. âThis is what largely drove the decision to reduce the size of our workforce.â
Lost Boys Interactive – UnknownOn January 12, Aftermath reported that an unknown amount of employees at Gearbox-owned developer Lost Boys Interactive had been laid off.
âIt seems a sizable portion of Lost Boys Interactive was laid off today, including myself,â wrote Jared Pace, a producer at the studio, on Linkedin. Pace reportedly told Aftermath that layoffs âaffected all disciplines at all levels.â
Funselektor – 3 people The Canadian indie studio behind Art of Rally announced on January 12 that three developers had been laid off.
âUnfortunately, weâve had to make some positions redundant at Funselektor,â tweeted the studioâs founder Dune Casu. âWeâd like to help them in their employment hunt in the video game sector, so we recommend these awesome Australians: @AdrianGenerator, @PezzleSp, @h4ypal.â
As of January 11, 2024, at least 2,792 people have been (or will be) laid off this year.
The video game industry is bigger and makes more money than movies and music combined, bringing in $180 billion in 2021 alone. Itâs also an industry that becomes riskier and more expensive each year as AAA games take longer and cost more to make, leading to a situation where even a single flop can sink a studio or publisher. And the whole industry is also in desperate need of unions to help protect its millions of workers when things donât work out as planned.
Until then, corporate greed, industry consolidation, and poor leadership will likely continue to cost thousands of people their jobs as weâve seen at Twitch and Unity.
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Nice