More than 10,000 people have been laid off from their jobs this year across the video game industry.
That’s according to an archive tallying layoffs across the industrywhich has now hit an estimated total of 10,100 people.
For comparison, 10,500 people were laid off in 2023, meaning almost as many have been impacted so far in 2024 in less than half the time.
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The archive lists layoffs by individual studio, publisher, or company, with Activision Blizzard having the most layoffs at 1900. This is followed by Unity with 1800, PlayStation Studios with 900, EA with 670, and Take Two with 600 (some of these numbers are approximate).
Some companies are listed but with an unknown number of people affected, while others are not yet included – Square Enix, for instance, has reportedly been impacted by an unknown number of layoffs across its US and European offices.
Grouping together by parent company also reveals Microsoft has laid off at least 2,150 people across its studios – the most of any company listed.
Coupled with 2023, over 20,000 people have lost their jobs in the video game industry in less than 18 months – an incredibly sobering statistic and indictment of the state of the industry.
Have layoffs reached an apex? It’s impossible to say what the future holds, although you would expect the situation to settle for the foreseeable.
At the least, Embracer – one of the biggest contributors to layoffs from 2023-2024 – has now “successfully finalized” its restructuring programme. Its headcount has dropped by 4532 in the past 12 months.
“The layoffs will slow down. Most of the big companies have made their moves now, and hopefully they won’t need to go further (some analysts speaking to GamesIndustry.biz believe companies may now need to hire back up within a few years) .But the pain isn’t over,” wrote GamesIndustry.biz’s Chris Dring for Eurogamer on the state of video game layoffs.
“With so many people out of work, and so few jobs out there, you might expect to see new studios form. We will get a few, but with investors being increasingly conservative, the reality is that a lot of these artists, programmers, designers, producers, writers, and others will have to leave the games business to find work. I’m writing this article from a cold business point-of-view, but there’s no denying the horrible human cost of this ‘correction’. anger towards executives, shareholders, and capitalism in general, is more than understandable.”
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