With the staff cuts announced today by Xbox, the number of layoffs that have occurred since the beginning of 2024 has already exceeded quota 5,500 people. In practice, only in January (and the month is not yet over) were staff cuts equal to approximately 55% of all of 2023which was already considered one of the most disastrous years for the sector.
As reported on our pages, today Microsoft announced that it has fired 1,900 people within Xbox, with the cuts therefore affecting Bethesda and Activision Blizzard. Not only that, Blizzard has announced the cancellation of survival Odyssey and the abandonment of president Mike Ybarra.
Adding these layoffs to those that occurred in recent weeks within Unity, Riot Games, CI Games and Gearbox, just to name a few, we arrive at a total of 5,670 layoffs since the beginning of 2024 according to the Video Games Layoffs portal, which as the name suggests, has the unfortunate task of keeping track of all the staff cuts that take place in the industry. It should be noted that the count only takes into account dismissals that are confirmed or in any case officially announced, so the total could be higher.
Worse than in 2023
We are talking about a number equal to 54% of the layoffs that occurred overall in 2023, which saw approximately 10,500 people among developers, managers, journalists and other professionals losing their jobs. In short, the negative trend that began last year not only seems destined to continue in 2024, but also to become further accentuated.
These waves of layoffs are due in part to misguided management focused on rapid and uncontrolled growth during the pandemic, in anticipation of a massive expansion of the market which ultimately did not materialize. However, this is only one of the many possible reasons, which clearly change based on the reality examined, and which also include a constant growth in development costs that does not keep pace with that of the market and the global economic crisis.
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