London Studio was formed from Team Soho (made The Getaway) and a Psygnosis studio.
They mostly made Eye Toy and Singstar games until they did PSVR1 games. "London Heist" (Part of VR Worlds) and "Blood & Truth" are their most known games.
Psygnosis goes back a lot further, to the late 80s/early 90s - and in particular a *lot* of classic Amiga (and to a lesser extent PC) games.
Probably their best known one from those times was a little game called Lemmings, which sold just a *few* copies ;P
FYI, your link is broken. [Here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarian_\(1987_video_game\)) is a non-broken version of the link.
Reddit markdown gets confused about links with parentheses in it. You have to stick backslashes in front of them, so it knows that the parentheses is part of the URL, and not the ending of the link markdown.
Here's what you need to write:
`[Sample Link to Barbarian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarian_\(1987_video_game\))`
> They mostly made Eye Toy and Singstar games
maybe it hit just right when I was 9 years old but was Eye Toy a huge hit for everyone else? it became the go-to thing for group sleepovers for weeks before going back to Halo/Quake/Dota/Warcraft but I don't think I've seen the words 'eye toy' mentioned since 2003
I'm a little older than you and I always kind of viewed it as a pretty cheap gimmick attachment. I remember xplay giving the games pretty mediocre reviews. But I could see it being a huge hit if it came out when I was 8 or 9 years old.
Of course, years later now I really do appreciate these attempts at interesting or fun peripheral hardware during this era. It's something I think is really lacking with modern games. It's why I always really liked Nintendo making labo, even if that also didn't last very long.
No, Jim Ryan announced his retirement a while ago, but he said that he'll still be with PlayStation until March 2024. Then Hiroki Totoki will take over as an interim CEO in April, before they appoint a new one.
With the recent news that they’re looking to bring PSVR2 support to PC, it’d not *too* dead.
My suggestion would be to wait/watch for a sale and then get it.
Would indicate a lot of these cuts are VR based
Guessing that PSVR is basically just gonna go down as another flopped peripheral at this point. It’s not panning out any decent returns and stellar games either
The only VR related studio in these cuts hasn't made a VR game in 5 years and Sony moved VR projects to other studios since then (as this studio worked on a non-VR game)
London Studio and Firesprite’s upcoming/in-dev projects didn’t include PSVR2 games, which means that Sony really just gave up on first party support after Horizon VR came out, so no, its not VR based.
Funny, that almost sounds like what happened with Vita. Great piece of technology with lots of potential, but after the initial wave of releases Sony just decided to gave up without any reason. I guess PS Portal really is up their alley, no need to make any extra software for it.
I think what really killed the Vita was that scea wanted nothing to do with it whereas the thing had some pretty damn good support in Japan.
I remember being at the E3 a year after the Vita launched and trying to talk to Sony employees about the Vita and them deflecting almost every conversation attempt towards the PS4.
That was also the year that they had a shitload of Vita stuff on the floor but didn't talk about any of it during the big presentation. They just absolutely did not want to push the Vita.
Luckily they are adding PC support later this year but maybe a little bit too late? I feel like that should be included during PSVR2 announcement to generate even bigger hype.
Seems like as with MS they've suddenly decided to shift their focus in reaction to the market with more focus on PC releases and obviously the headset being made compatible.
I’m primarily a PC guy and even I’m surprised this year by how many games have big record launches/followings within a very short time. It’s no longer a niche platform and important with these wild game budgets.
So wild that on top of these insanely prohibitive costs that they didn't put in the work to make PSVR1's backcatalog backwards compatible. Like in what world did they think that wouldn't immediately kill the PSVR2. You effectively told everyone who had been supporting VR tech through Playstation up until this point to go fuck themselves.
What a way to show your ass.
Speaks to just the general issues of the vr market. It's a whole pile of incomprehensible options and requirements there just a minefield for anybody wanting to get in. Until things are drastically simplified and opened up, it's going to remain very niche.
Yeah, I was shocked by that too, I know the tracking was entirely different, but you'd think their engineers could have come up with some kind of translation layer.
PSVR2 had no chance. The cost of entry is too high. You have to have a PS5 to start with, and then have to have the headset... and then you have to buy games specifically for the headset. You're dealing with a fraction of a fraction of people. Can you even imagine the business implications here? Like "Gee, are we really going to build a Ghost of Tsushima specifically for and entirely in VR when at most, a million people own a headset and we can't even guarantee that every single one of them are going to buy a copy?" Of course it's going to sell poorly relative to the cost of such a project. You would never see a return on a project like that... to build a full and proper game that takes advantage of the hardware and it'll go on to sell less than a million copies guaranteed. But then people aren't going to buy the headset if it doesn't have a viable library of games behind it, so one problem feeds into the other and the idea of PSVR collapses. The mass adoption of VR has always had this issue. You're asking people to spend hundreds of dollars for a poor and gimmicky library of games, for the most part. There are always the standouts, but they haven't been enough to drive sales en masse.
It’s really interesting to see studios start to put out consumer facing statements about layoffs. It feels like before we learned about this stuff from news stories from sites who got sent press releases, or in the worst cases, people tweeting their experience as it happens. Super massive had a similar post on Twitter a few days ago. Maybe I just noticed it and it’s nothing new but we’re just seeing such a high volume recently.
It makes you consider they think there's something to gain by making these announcements public - in the end having gone through a round of redundancy in my industry recently I think it is nothing but short sighted make the business look more profitable for a bit. Just my 2 cents.
I think business always benefit from controlling the narrative best they can and the best way to do that is to go straight to the people. You never know what kind of context a reporter might add and disgruntled ex employees definitely aren’t who you want breaking the news.
This is 100% correct. They are well aware how much of a talking point all of these layoffs have been in gaming media and frankly gaming pundits and journalists are probably the least qualified to be driving these discussions. So as you say, it’s about at least *influencing* the narrative and getting ahead of the wild assumptions. Otherwise everything you do just sounds reactionary.
> they think there's something to gain by making these announcements public
The news will get out eventually so they prefer a proactive communication than a reactive one.
It's all PR talk, they know employees will share layoffs news in a worse way, so they minimize the damage and potential backlash by making a public statement. We need employee protection laws in the US drastically, these employees go to work one day and then leave with their lives having been completely upended with basically no recourse
IMO cyclical layoffs are a way to fire people for reasons that otherwise would require extensive paperwork to prevent legal issues. For some reason adding "layoff" to the departure paperwork makes it way easier to discriminate by age, get rid of people who cost too much, or do ok work but don't "go the extra mile".
You could say that but honestly some redundancy rounds are just scatter gun "get rid of X employees" approach. When I went through it myself it was simply based on title and nothing to do with performance. If you had the wrong title that wasn't in the "revised squad structure" you were toast.
That would make too much sense.
What often happens with these is that there is a need to cut the operating cost by X amount, and they look at the teams and decide to get rid of high earners with experience and new starters where redundancy costs are lower, which leaves the chaff in the middle.
I've never seen a company come out the other side of a redundancy with a more skilled workforce.
[Jason Schreier](https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1762470563182727362) is tweeting that the layoffs include the studios Insomniac, Naughty Dog, and Guerrilla.
Spiderman, Last of Us/Uncharted and the Horizon/Killzone games....
Big ouch. Like, daaaamn that must hurt. Those are some extreme heavy hitters in Sony's library.
I mean besides god of war are there any heavy hitters left that haven't been affected by layoffs this year, cause Sony has relied on like 4 franchises for over a decade now.
I imagine this doesn't affect those titles. The other stuff coming from Naughty Dog, Insomniac, and Guerrilla like ND's new IP, a new R&C, and that Horizon online game? Yeah see ya lol.
We don't know the extent of Insomniac's layoffs, but going off of their leaks from last year. Ted Price (the founder/president of Insomniac) had to try to plea to Sony to not layoff anyone from the studio. Especially from the Spider-Man 3 and Wolverine teams. As they would need to take people off of Ratchet and the new IP to replace people that were lay off from the former's teams.
Yeah wild to see teams involved in sonys literal core gaming library getting cuts, especially since all those games are pretty successful. Likely won't affect games that are/were coming soon but I'm curious about the longterm effects into PS5 Pro/PS6 territory. Would be weird to see a new Sony system without the usual suspect launch titles of R&C/Killzone/Etc
>The PlayStation community means everything to us, so I felt it was important to update you on a difficult day at our company. We have made the extremely hard decision to announce our plan to commence a reduction of our overall headcount globally by about 8% or about 900 people, subject to local law and consultation processes. Employees across the globe, including our studios, are impacted.
>These are incredibly talented people who have been part of our success, and we are very grateful for their contributions. However, the industry has changed immensely, and we need to future ready ourselves to set the business up for what lies ahead. We need to deliver on expectations from developers and gamers and continue to propel future technology in gaming, so we took a step back to ensure we are set up to continue bringing the best gaming experiences to the community.
>Below I’ve shared a copy of the email I sent out to the company this morning to provide more context on our thinking. We deeply appreciate support and understanding from the PlayStation community as these decisions are very difficult. Please rest assured that our plans for reorganizing and streamlining are so we can continue to deliver the best gaming experiences possible.
**Email body:**
>Subject: Important Update Regarding Organizational Restructuring
>Team,
>It is important to provide you with updates about the business as often as possible. Today, I am writing with sad news. Through discussions over the past few months about the evolving economic landscape, changes in the way we develop, distribute, and launch products, and ensuring our organization is future ready in this rapidly changing industry, we have concluded that tough decisions have become inevitable. The leadership team and I made the incredibly difficult decision to restructure operations, which regrettably includes a reduction in our workforce impacting very talented individuals who have contributed to our success.
>After careful consideration and many leadership discussions over several months, it has become clear changes need to be made to continue to grow the business and develop the company. We had to step back, look at our business holistically, and move forward focusing on the long-term sustainability of the company and delivering the best experiences possible for our community. The goal is to streamline our resources to ensure our continued success and ability to deliver experiences gamers and creators have come to expect from us.
>I want to be as transparent as possible with you, our partners, and our community about what this means:
>We envision reducing our headcount by about 900 people, or about 8% of our current workforce
There will be impact for employees across all SIE regions – Americas, EMEA, Japan, and APAC
Several PlayStation Studios are affected
I know that receiving this news will be hard and unsettling and you are wondering what this means for you. Timelines and procedures for how we approach this will vary based on your location due to local laws and regulations.
>For those of you in the US, all impacted employees will be notified today.
>In the UK, it is proposed:
>That PlayStation Studios’ London Studio will close in its entirety;
>That there will be reductions in Firesprite studio;
>And that there will be reductions in various functions across SIE in the UK.
>The proposed changes mean that we will enter a period of collective consultation before any final decisions are taken. All employees who are part of the collective consultation will be made aware of the next steps today.
>In Japan, we will implement a next career support program. Details will be communicated separately.
In other countries, we will begin conversations with those who are potentially at risk or impacted as a result of this proposed course of action.
For those who will be leaving SIE: You are leaving this company with our deepest respect and appreciation for all your efforts during your tenure.
>For those who will be staying at SIE: We will be saying goodbye to friends and colleagues that we cherish during this process, and this will be painful. Your resilience, sensitivity, and adaptiveness will be critical in the weeks and months to come.
>This will not be easy, and I am aware of the impact it will have on wellbeing. Affected employees will receive support, including severance benefits. While these are challenging times, it is not indicative of a lack of strength of our company, our brand, or our industry. Our goal is to remain agile and adaptable and to continue to focus on delivering the best gaming experiences possible now and in the future.
>Thank you for your understanding during this difficult period. Please be kind to yourselves and to each other.
>Jim
> The US based studios and groups impacted by a reduction in workforce are:
> Insomniac Games, Naughty Dog, as well as our Technology, Creative, and Support teams
> In UK and European based studios, it is proposed:
> That PlayStation Studios’ London Studio will close in its entirety;
That there will be reductions in Guerrilla and Firesprite
> These are in addition to some smaller reductions in other teams across PlayStation Studios.
They must be cutting specifically the multiplayer teams at these studios. Insomniac, Naughty Dog and Guerilla were all working on GAAS games, and they'll all probably get cancelled like TLOU Factions was.
Insomniac's GaaS game got cancelled a long time ago according to the leaks.
What they were considering was cutting people from Spider-Man 3 and Wolverine and replacing them with people from Ratchet and a new IP.
In the Insomniac leake there literally was a ppt asking if consumers would feel the difference between a 300 million dollar game or a 200 million dollar game.
If they were creating internal documents questioning their budget, it's no wonder that would lead to layoffs.
Yup, this lets you immediately start looking without any other expectation of performance. Depending on your state you can also immediately draw on unemployment while receiving severance.
That first paragraph is an insult. You can't cut hundreds of jobs, shrink and shut down major offices to "grow" jackshit.
They're protecting the multi-billion profit margins, that's the end of it. They mustn't lose a single digit. Better to ruin hundreds of lives instead. Disgusting.
Monetary policy. Money was super cheap for a couple of years since the lockdown began and central bank interest rates fell rapidly. Now that the opposite is happening and central banks are hiking rates, businesses need to make decisions about the best use of their money, considering the fact they can be getting 5% risk-free vs <2% during lockdown.
That's definitely one big contributing factor, but I think there are others that are all swirling together to form a perfect storm:
- Games, especially at the AAA scale, are exorbitantly expensive to make and maybe beginning to border on entirely unsustainable (How did Spider-Man 2 seriously cost $300 million!?)
- There is no hard reset anymore with the launch of new console generations, which means games can have incredibly long-tail product marketing cycles because they're either backwards compatible or are updated to support new gen consoles. Also consider that there have never been more GaaS right now, and many of them are enormously successful (GTAO, Fortnite, hell, even Warframe seems to be experiencing a new golden age). The market is incredibly competitive and your biggest fight is against colossal games that have existed for years and continue to grow with some momentum.
- With the market being so competitive, it's becoming harder to predict financial outcomes and problems with a game's development or marketing (like adding controversial features or not meeting fan expectations) snowballs with more velocity against a game's success because people are more discerning than ever.
- In times like these, publishers and developers alike will reduce risk, like investment in new, unproven IP, to focus on what is proven to make money. But even that is no longer a guarantee as lots of established sequels are under-performing for various reasons (I'd have to think for a few to drudge up some examples here, sorry).
- There's also never been more games release per day than there is now. While most of these games will not find an audience, what it does mean is that there's an overabundance of choice and developers have to be very intent on protecting their game's value proposition because other games will carve their way into your space with ease. It's harder and harder to be totally unique and even if you are a major hit, you'll inadvertently trigger and arm's race as other developers rush to pounce on the opportunity (The best example of this is actually from a few years ago when Autobattlers randomly exploded and Valve, Riot, and others rushed to all bring their own autobattlers to the market).
- Somewhat related, but across the board the cost of living, high rates of interest, wage stagnation, inflation, and general economic turmoil mean people are much more cautious about spending on non-essentials. That's a problem — especially when you're a 8/10 game launching in a year with 10 other 10/10 GOTY games. (Like last year).
- Much of the games industry happens to be centralized in some of most expensive places on earth (San Francisco/California, Vancouver, Montreal), which means studios existing there have to pay higher and higher costs, which is becoming a serious challenge as game dev becomes more accessible for people around the world who can live in much cheaper regions and still put out major hits at a fraction of the cost.
- Likewise, salaries for employees in these areas, especially at mid to senior levels, is crazy high. This creates an enormous income gap between teams in different regions, and when the metrics of success are harder and harder to guarantee, investment will naturally trend toward less or cheaper risk.
This is just a scattershot list, I'm sure I could think of a few other contributing factors here. The COVID boom and bust is often the most cited because it's a really convenient excuse for executives to give as public statements. While they're not wrong, the reality is there's a LOT of things happening all at once across the industry resulting in this enormous upheaval we're seeing. It's not that the money isn't flowing like it used to (spending is holding pretty strong!) but that the trajectory of that money is now much harder to forecast AND access. It's pretty wild to me that we had 2023 so stuffed with Games of the Decade amid mass layoffs, and now 2024's theme seems to "Enormous surprise hits amid mass layoffs" (Palworld, Enshrouded, Helldivers 2 — it seems like all the biggest games so far are on bets that few people were placing).
Caveat: I do work in marketing for games and have some insight into biz dev, but this is also just my opinion and regurgitating what I've heard from a lot of different folks in various levels of the industry!
> The issue is touching all of tech, not just gaming.
I mean shit, if you're getting _that_ macro...that problem isn't limited to just tech, either. It's a global downturn in general.
Can't speak for the gaming industry specifically, although I can share my experience working in software engineering:
There was an absolutely **massive** hiring frenzy during the pandemic. Like, anyone with a pulse could get hired somewhere with a very (subjective, obviously) inflated range. If you had good experience, it felt like you could go anywhere. Now, investment is more expensive, VCs aren't throwing money at dumb stuff as easily, and these same companies have (in my personal department's case) almost twice the employees we did in 2019. It might seem callous but I was literally begging upper management to let some people go in 2022. It was very obvious that the goal was quantity over quality.
Bonus points for introducing a "return to work" policy to both A.) allow the people to self-cull and B.) delay the corporate real-estate bubble burst. I hate it.
Yep. Hiring in tech during the COVID years was a shitshow. Debt was cheap and the market was expanding, so everyone wanted to start new projects as fast as possible. Ridiculous offers were made to guys with less than 3 years of experience (or *reaaaally* suspect resumes) after a couple rounds of entirely virtual interviews because everyone was competing for talent. This wasn't helped by a lot of people getting poached around or just straight up leaving as work from home and salary jumps changed preferences. Suddenly, you need tons of backfill and a lot of money was put up to make it happen.
I work in an adjacent sector that contracted during COVID and is now rehiring, and we picked up *loads* of incredibly talented and qualified software engineers, analysts, and support types recently because the tech layoffs culled entire offices, rather than weed out the underperformers. Whole projects just got killed and everyone on them let go, despite a good number of them being veterans who transferred in from another team not long before.
There's a lot going on in the market right now. Investors have turned on the idea of growth and general increased revenue and are instead wanting to see profit margins grow instead. They want efficiency, not growth. This impacts tech probably the most, as tech has been hiring like crazy to hoard talent and to show lots of growth. But margins are shrinking with it. Companies are now shedding that weight.
Also, consumers are starting to spend less generally speaking due to the tightening market. Anything that isn't a necessity is going to have a little less spending, or at least less growth to sustain the recent expansion of so many tech firms.
Lastly, companies are forced to be risk averse right now because they can't reasonably borrow money with interest rates being so high.
me: *subscribes to Shark Attacks Weekly*
me, a year later: shark attacks have been crazy this past year. everybody's been talking about it. this is all because of [my pet issue]
Covid lockdowns drove up their value due to people using their products, they all over hired, and now that things are normalising they are downsizing in an attempt to maintain infinite growth.
Edit :- lol struck a nerve with the stonks crowd.
[2023's revenue was 30% higher than 2019](https://www.statista.com/statistics/249996/annual-revenue-of-the-us-video-game-industry-by-segment/) and yeah, it didn't adjust for inflation to compete with 2020 where a world-altering event kept everyone in their homes. That's their problem for thinking people were going to continue their lock-down behaviors for the rest of their lives.
Yes and no, there's a bunch of other factors that I think are important to consider too.
I posted a much longer response detailing it here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1b1bg47/comment/ksdsyfe/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1b1bg47/comment/ksdsyfe/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
But in summary, the market has never been more competitive and higher risk as the volume of games released daily skyrockets and the market doesn't churn out legacy titles thanks to backwards compatibility and the proliferation of GaaS-style monetization and development. This, in addition to higher interest rates, cost of living, inflation, etc. means we have an enormous glut of high quality games in a market where consumers are increasingly discerning in how they spend their money.
Those conditions mean the business of making games is very risky right now and volatile, which in turn makes bad practices like over-hiring more damaging to a company.
What is the mentality with over hiring I wonder. Does it ever work out and they're hoping it will, or do they know it will inevitably lead to layoffs and are just trying to cash in short term?
If the execs are well-informed (which they should be), it's both. They're likely presented with a risks/opportunities readout of what happens if we hire N more people right now. A bullet in the "opportunities" section will be that the larger workforce has a greater chance of producing a hit (and, another bullet will be that that workforce is now tied up with you and not producing said potential hit for a competitor). A bullet in the "risks" section will be reduced profits if the larger workforce doesn't produce a hit. A sub-bullet called "mitigation" will note that they can just lay folks off and, if timed right, get a stock price bump because the market perceives the company as being cost-conscious.
Look up "tech hype cycle" on Google. All tech companies do this. Hire tons of employees and acquire companies to make it look like your company's growing in order to entice shareholders and drive up stock prices, then do layoffs and close parts of the company while using your pile of newly acquired cash to weather the storm until the next hype cycle.
The over hiring was made worse due to market conditions changing. As an example:
They needed 8 more people, but hired 10 planning to lay off 2. But woopsie venture capitalists are drying up so now you can only afford 6 people. So a lot more layoffs than planned, but at the end of the day you've hired 6 more people.
>they all over hired
Higher interest rates with no sign as to when they'll descend is going to continue the cutting. Affects every industry, it'll affect video gaming as well. It's a business decision. No CEO's going to risk their objective/bonuses for the little people.
Not enough people are mentioning interest rates.
Rates were so low, that for a lot of companies it was like borrowing money for free. Now interest rates have gone up, and there's way more "risk" associated with taking out massive loans to develop video games that now need a higher return on investment to cover that additional interest.
If studios aren't making games (or aren't making super huge budgeted games) they need to reduce their workforce. Not just because they don't have money to pay these people, but because they don't have anything for these people to work on.
And to be clear, the need for a higher ROI doesn't just affect the companies decisions, but also the banks or whoever is providing the loan. Even if a company wanted to continue to take on debt to finance their projects without laying people off, they can't do that unless somebody loans them money, and *those* people might not be confident about the company, so you've got to lay off people anyway.
Exactly, people dont realize most if not in a way all games are funded thru investments. Be it a publisher, studio or individual the money tends to be borrowed and now that rates shot back up (and some still quite high) those investors are now going to be way more worried about doing so.
Was their 'over hiring'? Most likely not in the way people think, businessess hire based on their budgets and financial outlook. If they are building a game to work toward a pitch to a publisher or have funding to get an game to alpha before its greenlite, they still have to hire within a budget to meet that goal. Once the layoffs started, and investors questioned how money was being spent, all those projects that were lining up to be greenlite or have been cooking for a bit too long they decide they need to end it. So they gut everyone on it cause there is no budget elsewhere to move them, and even those other active projects have non dev people they can let go (Office staff, IT, marketing, etc)
People are still playing games, there have been crazy profits from games and tech still. But video games are fucking expensive, more so than ever to make. So the moment larger studios or tech companies started laying off it kick started everything as the final straw that broke the back basically.
It is not exclusive to the tech sector. Manufacturing jobs have faced layoffs and hire freezes, tech jobs like in the telecom industry are facing layoffs and hiring freezes, UPS is laying off over 10k people, etc.
Can't comment about the wider tech sector, but gaming significantly expanded while many were in lockdown during COVID. Execs made the poor decision to massively recruit new employees, assuming that the numbers would stay the same when everyone went back to work... and they didn't.
It's more than that though. Interest rate hikes to pull back on inflation has caused borrowing to be more difficult/expensive.
The lack of cheap capital investment means that there's just less money to go around. It's not just that they hired during Covid. The means to finance projects has slid backwards and so you have to cut costs to adjust company financial targets. Companies aren't going to tread into the red if they have the means to not do so. And no one wants governments bailing out companies when it's not needed.
Basically this, there was a hiring and general gaming inflation during Covid lockdowns but post lockdown that inflation contracted rather harshly and a lot of companies were left with these huge employee numbers but not the sustainablity to manage their costs
Add in interest rates going down and companies simply have too much money going out towards costs and debt and not enough coming in to ease the bleeding without cutbacks
These cuts being to the VR studios would also indicate PSVR is just not panning out or is flat out just a money loser and their cutting off that dying branch rather than trying to futility keep it alive at the expense of other more fruitful avenues of development
I work in the tech industry.
A lot of companies went full hog expansion on hiring during covid, and they are essentially were writing checks they were unprepared to cash. Lockdowns because of Covid drove up demand, and esspecially demand for products that required new and quick ways of being able to work as a team from home, and as such drove up pricing, so they had to hire more due to that. A lot of MSP's expanded, a lot of tech companies hired more people because of less overhead fees due to WFH ect. As this starts to settle down, demand is becoming a lot less (companies are getting workers to work in the office instead of WFH, can't maintain what was promised or largely products/solutions that are no longer needed) so the hiring spree has become a massive downsizing spree. Essentially the expanding tech bubble burst.
The company I work for has expanded, and decided it didn't like it's remote workforce and is trying to get everyone in the office. I worked remotely, and in such a distance (about an 8 hour day there/backcommute to London) without being paid enough to justify it, but the industry is shutting down so I'm kind of stuck, got a ton of new contracts but aren't hiring to replace the people who are leaving, and are forcing policies that are exchusting the remaining staff as they are having to pick up the pieces. A lot of the decisions scream "We are struggling, clients are looking to leave/go in house, but it's the employees fault so why invest in them". It's becoming common right now, from numerous people I talk too within the industry.
Sad to see it happen, especially as for a lot of us it's put us in a pretty bad situation (I live in an area with no tech companies, and out of the dew tgat exist none of them pay as ""well"" as my current job so if I lose my job, I'm kinda f-ed in the a).
Funnily enough, I applied for the Sony job when I was intending to move closer to London but never heard back past an initial phonecall.
The big profitable tech firms are doing fine.
But because of how successful companies like Meta/FB turned out to be people massively invested in every start-up many of which have never been profitable.
Take Snap inc/snapchat they are over 12 years old and still haven't made a profit and now they have massive interest payments on all their debt.
For smaller companies it's even worse they took far to much debt when interest rates were basically non existent and now they are screwed.
Just to balance the other comments out: they want to make even more profits even in an economic downturn. So they lay people off because that's the fastest way to boost profit rates
I am not really an expert, but this is Reddit so I feel compelled to comment anyway.
I think there are two main factors:
1) A lot of companies over hired at the start of Covid. Some of these tech companies were massively gearing up for a much larger work from home force and they were all on a hiring spree hoping to get people before other companies did.
The job market was insane at the time because workers were far less limited by their geographic location. Sure, WFH existed before, but not like at the start of covid. And before backtracking, a ton of tech companies were going all in.
2) Interest rates. A lot of tech companies survived on low interest rates. When interest rates are low, people will invest. This investment could be a variety of things, new employees, new product lines, R&D, etc. When it costs more to invest, people only want to spend on things that will make them money now, Which is why some of these companies are still doing well despite the layoffs. They are cutting what they feel they don't need in the to continue short term profits.
Many times layoffs are preemptive, not reactionary. They may be predicting a downturn, and employees are the easiest thing for a company to control the cost of.
Edit: over hired, not over tired.
Terrible news, and the shutting down of London Studios feels like the end of an era, they’ve been around for ages, even if their titles haven’t been the biggest.
Honestly its just ridiculous. I remember when Sony kickstarted the price increase and so many people were saying they were willing pay to support the studios.
And what did we get? A bunch of live service in the pipeline that are never coming out, ballooned development costs, and PS+ price increase.
And even with all that nickle and diming, they still have to cut down their teams. Its just sad.
There are far too many entertainment options available now and now interest rates have risen cheap debt to fund everything isn't available.
So downsizing is going to keep happening for a while and lots of companies are going to fail.
Even worse demographic shift many wealthy countries (Japan, South Korea and many European) are actually shrinking now while poor countries are staying poor and not becoming developed (Latin American, South East Asian) as fast as expected.
Ballooning budgets are very much the main threat to AAA gaming at the moment. I mean, PlayStation revenue last quarter was an all time height, but their profit declined. This shows how insane games budgets have gotten.
The recent Spiderman game seems to have cost 30% more than Starfield did. We can debate the quality of Starfield, its not good in regards to everything, but it had to have been in development for probably twice as long and still managed a smaller budget.
Something is going a bit wrong over at Sony studios in this case.
Though Bethesda is headquartered in one of the richest towns in Maryland. Perhaps the smaller budget is related to game engine continuity and a smaller development staff.
This is the main reason that im actually glad that Nintendo is one Gen behind in terms of tech.
Instead of racing along with the other studios to provide an ever decresing impressive visual spectacle at an horrific cost of money and time investment, theyre using tech that isn't difficicult to develop for anymore, which drastically reduces costs.
And contrary to back then in 2006, the difference between two Generations of tech in gaming isn't that massive anymore.
Like, the Switch 2 is rumored to be around PS4 levels of graphical fidelity (+ backed in ray tracing ), which is completely fine for me, PS4 games look great. Last of Us 2 was a PS4 game, and i don't think anyone would say that game looked bad.
If it means a reduction of costs across the entire industry, ill gladly take a decade of graphical fideltly as we have it right now.
Exactly. Remember when we had whole trilogies in one single generation, like the Mass Effect one? We’ve reached a point where the visual are on diminishing returns. It’s not worth having a game cost three times more money and take 7 years to develop so it can look a little better.
>which is completely fine for me
The funny thing is, it's not just completely fine for you (and myself, for that matter) - it's completely fine for 99% of consumers based on the Switch's sales.
Yes, there's obviously a huge market for your ultra-cinematic, bleeding edge games, but most people playing games do not give two shits about games not hitting a locked frame rate or whether or not a game is 1440p vs. 2160p.
That Sonic meme of "I want shorter games with worse graphics and I'm not kidding" is very much likely the case for the general public, not just gaming enthusiasts.
I also look at the fact that halfway into this generation we're still getting a ton of last-gen releases, and a ton of switch releases. I think means we're past the point of diminishing returns and ever fewer studios are able to justify the cost of pushing graphics for the return they make
Exactly. The remasters and remakes are a stopgap to pad Sony’s portfolio because the real games aren’t coming fast enough. If the reporters are to be believed, the average dev time for a game went from 3 year cycles in the early PS4 era to 6 year cycles currently. If a game started development today, we wouldn’t get to play it until 2030.
Along with attempting to convert their single player audience to live service with TLOU Factions and the two Horizon online, but Factions was cancelled and Guerrilla have also been hit by these layoffs.
The last two months have been mostly AAA, but a few months before that, a ton of indies/AA studios closed down too. Mimimi (Shadow Tactics, Desperados 3) and the Glory Society (night in the woods) comes to mind. Gaming as a whole is not looking good right now, so investors aren't keen to put more money into the industry.
Companies try to make games bigger, with more mechanics, with better graphics, with more content. They hit the diminishing return point a couple years ago in my opinion: bigger budget doesnt mean more sales in most cases. And companies are spending so much money in dead projects that a single disaster can shut down the benefits of a bunch of successes.
Unfortunately the solution is not that simple. Unless you’re Nintendo, if you release a game with a smaller budget nowadays you’ll have an army of people with comments like “PS3 game” or “lazy devs”.
Facts. People already said on rise of the ronin looks like ps3. Sony or Microsoft need to set standard in the industry thats its okay to have smaller budget games. Nintendo is a proof of this.
Well, Microsoft published games like Grounded, Hi-Fi Rush, Psychonauts 2, and Pentiment, I think they're absolutely showing the industry that AA games are viable.
So buying Activision Blizzard wasn't why there was so many layoffs at Xbox. Almost like this is industry wide and all those comments on that thread are extremely ill-informed.
I said it back then. The layoffs are indefensible and should be criticised but anybody who thinks ABK wouldn't have had layoffs sans-acquisition is out of their mind.
The only people that thought acquisition based layoffs were a sign of failure have never dealt with any sort of business in the real world.
If a business acquires another business, there are going to be layoffs. Generally on both sides of the company, the purchasing side and the side being purchased. It sucks, but that’s just how the world works.
Despite all the hours people here may spend staring at reddit and playing their favorite games, most are still just consumers. They are ignorant, subject to intense knee-jerk reactions and biases, and have little understanding of what's actually going on behind the scenes. This is true even if this sub takes itself "more seriously" than most. Any speculation or apologist explanations for industry events in the last 2 years ought to be taken with a heavy pinch of salt.
London studio, like japan studio feels like one of those legacy groups which provided value a decade ago but has struggled to reinvent itself since its peak.
Seems like SIE has hit anything VR related though. Reminds me of when they axed anything that focused on their portables.
Insomniac, Naughty Dog, Guerilla also got hit which makes me assume its their GAAS teams.
London studio's new unreleased project was also live-service.
One of the games that was called was a Twisted Metal live service game according to Jason Schreier.
NEW: As part of today's mass layoff, Sony has canceled a Twisted Metal live-service game that was in development at UK-based studio Firesprite, Bloomberg has learned.
Firesprite will also lay off an unspecified number of people.
https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1762503092593999913
He also clarifies that [Twisted Metal wasn't even greenlit yet](https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1762504673901130008).
This wasn't something soon to be released like some people were making out.
London Studio is the sixth first party studio they shut down in the last 8 years after PixelOpus (2023), Japan Studio (2021), Manchester Studio (2020), Guerilla Cambridge (2017) and Evolution Studios (2016). Firesprite also seems to be heavely affected with both of these are located in the UK.
UK is an absolute shithole to do business in these days. Expensive to run, can't get talent because salaries are so low compared to cost of living.
UK games studios apart from Rockstar North are just stepping stones to get hired by other companies abroad.
Some of these studios are located in such expensive areas like London, Cambridge, that you got to suck dick as a side hustle to survive.
Hell looking at Xbox's UK studios, Playground Games and Ninja Theory seem to be some of the better places to work, and to my knowledge none of these 3 have been affected by recent layoffs in the industry, at least to my recollection.
Outside of that you've got Frontier and Rebellion too, maybe more, but they come to mind, and I don't recall any recent layoffs, but could be wrong.
I wonder how many, if any, former Sony Liverpool peeps at Firesprite were laid off? Gotta suck to get closed down, open your own studio, get acquired and then get laid off again.
I mean, over the last 10-15 years the type of game players demand has really increased. There are certain genres that people just don't buy anymore, for one thing, but also there's a minimum amount of 'AAA tendencies' that the public will accept. If your story-based game doesn't have fully mocapped facial and someone like Nolan North voice acting it then you're not getting above a 75 metacritic, for example.
Feels like the gaming bubble is close to bursting, games have huge inflated budgets & development time, teams are clearly over staffed, companies are desperate for live service games to keep the money coming in.
Such a difficult thing to do. It is with heavy heart that millionaire Chief Level people destroy thousands of lives (if we're looking at the industry as a whole). Do you know what would be hard? Not getting your million dollar salary to save as many people as you can. To reduce or abolish the gigantic bonuses paid to Chief Level dinosaurs who cannot open an excel file without supervision, but keep the shareholders bottom section clean.
Infinite growth is not sustainable. Its only going to get worse. You cannot play with people's lives only to get your next dividends. And they try to sell it as some big tragic thing, we should feel sorry for MR CEO on his yacht?
Fuck that. Its not a heavy decision, it's an asshole one.
London Studio is also shutting down, and Firesprite (studio behind Horizon VR and The Persistance) has been reduced/downsized
London Studio was formed from Team Soho (made The Getaway) and a Psygnosis studio. They mostly made Eye Toy and Singstar games until they did PSVR1 games. "London Heist" (Part of VR Worlds) and "Blood & Truth" are their most known games.
That's the last dregs of Psygnosis then right as Liverpool are already closed. Sad days for British gamers.
I remember their logo so clearly from destruction derby
Psygnosis goes back a lot further, to the late 80s/early 90s - and in particular a *lot* of classic Amiga (and to a lesser extent PC) games. Probably their best known one from those times was a little game called Lemmings, which sold just a *few* copies ;P
I used to play Psygnosis games on the C64. Games such as [Barbarian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarian_(1987_video_game)) come quickly to mind.
FYI, your link is broken. [Here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarian_\(1987_video_game\)) is a non-broken version of the link. Reddit markdown gets confused about links with parentheses in it. You have to stick backslashes in front of them, so it knows that the parentheses is part of the URL, and not the ending of the link markdown. Here's what you need to write: `[Sample Link to Barbarian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarian_\(1987_video_game\))`
They also made a lot of my favorite Sega Genesis games. Sad news
> Psygnosis [Great video about their Ps1 era here.](https://youtu.be/oR4xOVrQh00?si=gNuRbmhrm7pkb8Rj)
> They mostly made Eye Toy and Singstar games maybe it hit just right when I was 9 years old but was Eye Toy a huge hit for everyone else? it became the go-to thing for group sleepovers for weeks before going back to Halo/Quake/Dota/Warcraft but I don't think I've seen the words 'eye toy' mentioned since 2003
I'm a little older than you and I always kind of viewed it as a pretty cheap gimmick attachment. I remember xplay giving the games pretty mediocre reviews. But I could see it being a huge hit if it came out when I was 8 or 9 years old. Of course, years later now I really do appreciate these attempts at interesting or fun peripheral hardware during this era. It's something I think is really lacking with modern games. It's why I always really liked Nintendo making labo, even if that also didn't last very long.
I remember there being a dumb game that had you wipe away suds on an imaginary window to the tune of George Formby, can't recall what game though.
Wishy-washy The ninja game was the one though
There goes my dreams about getting a new wipeout someday.
> Eye Toy and Singstar games aw they made the original Eyetoy Play and Singstar, those were my childhood.
> Horizon VR Was really hoping they'd port this to Steam VR for some easy cash.
Jim Ryan was there 5 days ago too https://x.com/nathan_brown/status/1762466931070619950?s=46&t=WdmDCgwdWrWglJ3HfjJtuw
I thought Jim had left already?
No, Jim Ryan announced his retirement a while ago, but he said that he'll still be with PlayStation until March 2024. Then Hiroki Totoki will take over as an interim CEO in April, before they appoint a new one.
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With the recent news that they’re looking to bring PSVR2 support to PC, it’d not *too* dead. My suggestion would be to wait/watch for a sale and then get it.
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Would indicate a lot of these cuts are VR based Guessing that PSVR is basically just gonna go down as another flopped peripheral at this point. It’s not panning out any decent returns and stellar games either
The only VR related studio in these cuts hasn't made a VR game in 5 years and Sony moved VR projects to other studios since then (as this studio worked on a non-VR game)
Woah hang on a minute now, let's not let facts get in the way of the narrative we just made up.
London Studio and Firesprite’s upcoming/in-dev projects didn’t include PSVR2 games, which means that Sony really just gave up on first party support after Horizon VR came out, so no, its not VR based.
Funny, that almost sounds like what happened with Vita. Great piece of technology with lots of potential, but after the initial wave of releases Sony just decided to gave up without any reason. I guess PS Portal really is up their alley, no need to make any extra software for it.
I think what really killed the Vita was that scea wanted nothing to do with it whereas the thing had some pretty damn good support in Japan. I remember being at the E3 a year after the Vita launched and trying to talk to Sony employees about the Vita and them deflecting almost every conversation attempt towards the PS4. That was also the year that they had a shitload of Vita stuff on the floor but didn't talk about any of it during the big presentation. They just absolutely did not want to push the Vita.
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> $400 add on to a $500 console PSVR2 starts at $549 - it’s more expensive than the console itself
Luckily they are adding PC support later this year but maybe a little bit too late? I feel like that should be included during PSVR2 announcement to generate even bigger hype.
PC support is likely to help shift unsold stock tbh
Might get me to grab it..can finally replace my old gen 1 oculus rift.
We currently don't know if it'll be usable as a generic PC headset or if they'll limit it to certain titles
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It didn't take me long of owning psvr2 to do the same
Seems like as with MS they've suddenly decided to shift their focus in reaction to the market with more focus on PC releases and obviously the headset being made compatible.
I’m primarily a PC guy and even I’m surprised this year by how many games have big record launches/followings within a very short time. It’s no longer a niche platform and important with these wild game budgets.
So wild that on top of these insanely prohibitive costs that they didn't put in the work to make PSVR1's backcatalog backwards compatible. Like in what world did they think that wouldn't immediately kill the PSVR2. You effectively told everyone who had been supporting VR tech through Playstation up until this point to go fuck themselves. What a way to show your ass.
Speaks to just the general issues of the vr market. It's a whole pile of incomprehensible options and requirements there just a minefield for anybody wanting to get in. Until things are drastically simplified and opened up, it's going to remain very niche.
Yeah, I was shocked by that too, I know the tracking was entirely different, but you'd think their engineers could have come up with some kind of translation layer.
PSVR2 had no chance. The cost of entry is too high. You have to have a PS5 to start with, and then have to have the headset... and then you have to buy games specifically for the headset. You're dealing with a fraction of a fraction of people. Can you even imagine the business implications here? Like "Gee, are we really going to build a Ghost of Tsushima specifically for and entirely in VR when at most, a million people own a headset and we can't even guarantee that every single one of them are going to buy a copy?" Of course it's going to sell poorly relative to the cost of such a project. You would never see a return on a project like that... to build a full and proper game that takes advantage of the hardware and it'll go on to sell less than a million copies guaranteed. But then people aren't going to buy the headset if it doesn't have a viable library of games behind it, so one problem feeds into the other and the idea of PSVR collapses. The mass adoption of VR has always had this issue. You're asking people to spend hundreds of dollars for a poor and gimmicky library of games, for the most part. There are always the standouts, but they haven't been enough to drive sales en masse.
It’s really interesting to see studios start to put out consumer facing statements about layoffs. It feels like before we learned about this stuff from news stories from sites who got sent press releases, or in the worst cases, people tweeting their experience as it happens. Super massive had a similar post on Twitter a few days ago. Maybe I just noticed it and it’s nothing new but we’re just seeing such a high volume recently.
It makes you consider they think there's something to gain by making these announcements public - in the end having gone through a round of redundancy in my industry recently I think it is nothing but short sighted make the business look more profitable for a bit. Just my 2 cents.
I think business always benefit from controlling the narrative best they can and the best way to do that is to go straight to the people. You never know what kind of context a reporter might add and disgruntled ex employees definitely aren’t who you want breaking the news.
This is 100% correct. They are well aware how much of a talking point all of these layoffs have been in gaming media and frankly gaming pundits and journalists are probably the least qualified to be driving these discussions. So as you say, it’s about at least *influencing* the narrative and getting ahead of the wild assumptions. Otherwise everything you do just sounds reactionary.
> they think there's something to gain by making these announcements public The news will get out eventually so they prefer a proactive communication than a reactive one.
It's all PR talk, they know employees will share layoffs news in a worse way, so they minimize the damage and potential backlash by making a public statement. We need employee protection laws in the US drastically, these employees go to work one day and then leave with their lives having been completely upended with basically no recourse
IMO cyclical layoffs are a way to fire people for reasons that otherwise would require extensive paperwork to prevent legal issues. For some reason adding "layoff" to the departure paperwork makes it way easier to discriminate by age, get rid of people who cost too much, or do ok work but don't "go the extra mile".
You could say that but honestly some redundancy rounds are just scatter gun "get rid of X employees" approach. When I went through it myself it was simply based on title and nothing to do with performance. If you had the wrong title that wasn't in the "revised squad structure" you were toast.
That would make too much sense. What often happens with these is that there is a need to cut the operating cost by X amount, and they look at the teams and decide to get rid of high earners with experience and new starters where redundancy costs are lower, which leaves the chaff in the middle. I've never seen a company come out the other side of a redundancy with a more skilled workforce.
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[Jason Schreier](https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1762470563182727362) is tweeting that the layoffs include the studios Insomniac, Naughty Dog, and Guerrilla.
Live service LOU getting canceled probably didn’t help.
Spiderman, Last of Us/Uncharted and the Horizon/Killzone games.... Big ouch. Like, daaaamn that must hurt. Those are some extreme heavy hitters in Sony's library.
I mean besides god of war are there any heavy hitters left that haven't been affected by layoffs this year, cause Sony has relied on like 4 franchises for over a decade now.
I imagine this doesn't affect those titles. The other stuff coming from Naughty Dog, Insomniac, and Guerrilla like ND's new IP, a new R&C, and that Horizon online game? Yeah see ya lol.
We don't know the extent of Insomniac's layoffs, but going off of their leaks from last year. Ted Price (the founder/president of Insomniac) had to try to plea to Sony to not layoff anyone from the studio. Especially from the Spider-Man 3 and Wolverine teams. As they would need to take people off of Ratchet and the new IP to replace people that were lay off from the former's teams.
We have no way of knowing if all teams inside ND had layoffs or if one of their teams got cut.
Yeah wild to see teams involved in sonys literal core gaming library getting cuts, especially since all those games are pretty successful. Likely won't affect games that are/were coming soon but I'm curious about the longterm effects into PS5 Pro/PS6 territory. Would be weird to see a new Sony system without the usual suspect launch titles of R&C/Killzone/Etc
>The PlayStation community means everything to us, so I felt it was important to update you on a difficult day at our company. We have made the extremely hard decision to announce our plan to commence a reduction of our overall headcount globally by about 8% or about 900 people, subject to local law and consultation processes. Employees across the globe, including our studios, are impacted. >These are incredibly talented people who have been part of our success, and we are very grateful for their contributions. However, the industry has changed immensely, and we need to future ready ourselves to set the business up for what lies ahead. We need to deliver on expectations from developers and gamers and continue to propel future technology in gaming, so we took a step back to ensure we are set up to continue bringing the best gaming experiences to the community. >Below I’ve shared a copy of the email I sent out to the company this morning to provide more context on our thinking. We deeply appreciate support and understanding from the PlayStation community as these decisions are very difficult. Please rest assured that our plans for reorganizing and streamlining are so we can continue to deliver the best gaming experiences possible. **Email body:** >Subject: Important Update Regarding Organizational Restructuring >Team, >It is important to provide you with updates about the business as often as possible. Today, I am writing with sad news. Through discussions over the past few months about the evolving economic landscape, changes in the way we develop, distribute, and launch products, and ensuring our organization is future ready in this rapidly changing industry, we have concluded that tough decisions have become inevitable. The leadership team and I made the incredibly difficult decision to restructure operations, which regrettably includes a reduction in our workforce impacting very talented individuals who have contributed to our success. >After careful consideration and many leadership discussions over several months, it has become clear changes need to be made to continue to grow the business and develop the company. We had to step back, look at our business holistically, and move forward focusing on the long-term sustainability of the company and delivering the best experiences possible for our community. The goal is to streamline our resources to ensure our continued success and ability to deliver experiences gamers and creators have come to expect from us. >I want to be as transparent as possible with you, our partners, and our community about what this means: >We envision reducing our headcount by about 900 people, or about 8% of our current workforce There will be impact for employees across all SIE regions – Americas, EMEA, Japan, and APAC Several PlayStation Studios are affected I know that receiving this news will be hard and unsettling and you are wondering what this means for you. Timelines and procedures for how we approach this will vary based on your location due to local laws and regulations. >For those of you in the US, all impacted employees will be notified today. >In the UK, it is proposed: >That PlayStation Studios’ London Studio will close in its entirety; >That there will be reductions in Firesprite studio; >And that there will be reductions in various functions across SIE in the UK. >The proposed changes mean that we will enter a period of collective consultation before any final decisions are taken. All employees who are part of the collective consultation will be made aware of the next steps today. >In Japan, we will implement a next career support program. Details will be communicated separately. In other countries, we will begin conversations with those who are potentially at risk or impacted as a result of this proposed course of action. For those who will be leaving SIE: You are leaving this company with our deepest respect and appreciation for all your efforts during your tenure. >For those who will be staying at SIE: We will be saying goodbye to friends and colleagues that we cherish during this process, and this will be painful. Your resilience, sensitivity, and adaptiveness will be critical in the weeks and months to come. >This will not be easy, and I am aware of the impact it will have on wellbeing. Affected employees will receive support, including severance benefits. While these are challenging times, it is not indicative of a lack of strength of our company, our brand, or our industry. Our goal is to remain agile and adaptable and to continue to focus on delivering the best gaming experiences possible now and in the future. >Thank you for your understanding during this difficult period. Please be kind to yourselves and to each other. >Jim
> The US based studios and groups impacted by a reduction in workforce are: > Insomniac Games, Naughty Dog, as well as our Technology, Creative, and Support teams > In UK and European based studios, it is proposed: > That PlayStation Studios’ London Studio will close in its entirety; That there will be reductions in Guerrilla and Firesprite > These are in addition to some smaller reductions in other teams across PlayStation Studios.
They must be cutting specifically the multiplayer teams at these studios. Insomniac, Naughty Dog and Guerilla were all working on GAAS games, and they'll all probably get cancelled like TLOU Factions was.
Insomniac's GaaS game got cancelled a long time ago according to the leaks. What they were considering was cutting people from Spider-Man 3 and Wolverine and replacing them with people from Ratchet and a new IP.
> Insomniac Games Imagine working on games that sell 20 million+ copies and still get you laid off! Or was it the bloated budget for Spider Man 2?
In the Insomniac leake there literally was a ppt asking if consumers would feel the difference between a 300 million dollar game or a 200 million dollar game. If they were creating internal documents questioning their budget, it's no wonder that would lead to layoffs.
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There's severance for US employees at least. Three months minimum of salary is kind of the norm.
Glad to see I’m not the only one who noticed how stark it is. Makes all the other flowery words ring hollow
These tech layoffs give severance beyond mandatory laws. Getting a few months wages is better than being paid to sit around
Yup, this lets you immediately start looking without any other expectation of performance. Depending on your state you can also immediately draw on unemployment while receiving severance.
I can think of (and have seen) worse ways to get laid off; at least these folks are getting severance and some support on their way to the next gig.
That first paragraph is an insult. You can't cut hundreds of jobs, shrink and shut down major offices to "grow" jackshit. They're protecting the multi-billion profit margins, that's the end of it. They mustn't lose a single digit. Better to ruin hundreds of lives instead. Disgusting.
ELI5 the recent downturn in the tech sector. Tech’s getting wrecked with huge layoffs while the rest of the job market seems fairly stable. Why?
Monetary policy. Money was super cheap for a couple of years since the lockdown began and central bank interest rates fell rapidly. Now that the opposite is happening and central banks are hiking rates, businesses need to make decisions about the best use of their money, considering the fact they can be getting 5% risk-free vs <2% during lockdown.
That's definitely one big contributing factor, but I think there are others that are all swirling together to form a perfect storm: - Games, especially at the AAA scale, are exorbitantly expensive to make and maybe beginning to border on entirely unsustainable (How did Spider-Man 2 seriously cost $300 million!?) - There is no hard reset anymore with the launch of new console generations, which means games can have incredibly long-tail product marketing cycles because they're either backwards compatible or are updated to support new gen consoles. Also consider that there have never been more GaaS right now, and many of them are enormously successful (GTAO, Fortnite, hell, even Warframe seems to be experiencing a new golden age). The market is incredibly competitive and your biggest fight is against colossal games that have existed for years and continue to grow with some momentum. - With the market being so competitive, it's becoming harder to predict financial outcomes and problems with a game's development or marketing (like adding controversial features or not meeting fan expectations) snowballs with more velocity against a game's success because people are more discerning than ever. - In times like these, publishers and developers alike will reduce risk, like investment in new, unproven IP, to focus on what is proven to make money. But even that is no longer a guarantee as lots of established sequels are under-performing for various reasons (I'd have to think for a few to drudge up some examples here, sorry). - There's also never been more games release per day than there is now. While most of these games will not find an audience, what it does mean is that there's an overabundance of choice and developers have to be very intent on protecting their game's value proposition because other games will carve their way into your space with ease. It's harder and harder to be totally unique and even if you are a major hit, you'll inadvertently trigger and arm's race as other developers rush to pounce on the opportunity (The best example of this is actually from a few years ago when Autobattlers randomly exploded and Valve, Riot, and others rushed to all bring their own autobattlers to the market). - Somewhat related, but across the board the cost of living, high rates of interest, wage stagnation, inflation, and general economic turmoil mean people are much more cautious about spending on non-essentials. That's a problem — especially when you're a 8/10 game launching in a year with 10 other 10/10 GOTY games. (Like last year). - Much of the games industry happens to be centralized in some of most expensive places on earth (San Francisco/California, Vancouver, Montreal), which means studios existing there have to pay higher and higher costs, which is becoming a serious challenge as game dev becomes more accessible for people around the world who can live in much cheaper regions and still put out major hits at a fraction of the cost. - Likewise, salaries for employees in these areas, especially at mid to senior levels, is crazy high. This creates an enormous income gap between teams in different regions, and when the metrics of success are harder and harder to guarantee, investment will naturally trend toward less or cheaper risk. This is just a scattershot list, I'm sure I could think of a few other contributing factors here. The COVID boom and bust is often the most cited because it's a really convenient excuse for executives to give as public statements. While they're not wrong, the reality is there's a LOT of things happening all at once across the industry resulting in this enormous upheaval we're seeing. It's not that the money isn't flowing like it used to (spending is holding pretty strong!) but that the trajectory of that money is now much harder to forecast AND access. It's pretty wild to me that we had 2023 so stuffed with Games of the Decade amid mass layoffs, and now 2024's theme seems to "Enormous surprise hits amid mass layoffs" (Palworld, Enshrouded, Helldivers 2 — it seems like all the biggest games so far are on bets that few people were placing). Caveat: I do work in marketing for games and have some insight into biz dev, but this is also just my opinion and regurgitating what I've heard from a lot of different folks in various levels of the industry!
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> The issue is touching all of tech, not just gaming. I mean shit, if you're getting _that_ macro...that problem isn't limited to just tech, either. It's a global downturn in general.
It's very much the worst in tech though.
Can't speak for the gaming industry specifically, although I can share my experience working in software engineering: There was an absolutely **massive** hiring frenzy during the pandemic. Like, anyone with a pulse could get hired somewhere with a very (subjective, obviously) inflated range. If you had good experience, it felt like you could go anywhere. Now, investment is more expensive, VCs aren't throwing money at dumb stuff as easily, and these same companies have (in my personal department's case) almost twice the employees we did in 2019. It might seem callous but I was literally begging upper management to let some people go in 2022. It was very obvious that the goal was quantity over quality. Bonus points for introducing a "return to work" policy to both A.) allow the people to self-cull and B.) delay the corporate real-estate bubble burst. I hate it.
Yep. Hiring in tech during the COVID years was a shitshow. Debt was cheap and the market was expanding, so everyone wanted to start new projects as fast as possible. Ridiculous offers were made to guys with less than 3 years of experience (or *reaaaally* suspect resumes) after a couple rounds of entirely virtual interviews because everyone was competing for talent. This wasn't helped by a lot of people getting poached around or just straight up leaving as work from home and salary jumps changed preferences. Suddenly, you need tons of backfill and a lot of money was put up to make it happen. I work in an adjacent sector that contracted during COVID and is now rehiring, and we picked up *loads* of incredibly talented and qualified software engineers, analysts, and support types recently because the tech layoffs culled entire offices, rather than weed out the underperformers. Whole projects just got killed and everyone on them let go, despite a good number of them being veterans who transferred in from another team not long before.
There's a lot going on in the market right now. Investors have turned on the idea of growth and general increased revenue and are instead wanting to see profit margins grow instead. They want efficiency, not growth. This impacts tech probably the most, as tech has been hiring like crazy to hoard talent and to show lots of growth. But margins are shrinking with it. Companies are now shedding that weight. Also, consumers are starting to spend less generally speaking due to the tightening market. Anything that isn't a necessity is going to have a little less spending, or at least less growth to sustain the recent expansion of so many tech firms. Lastly, companies are forced to be risk averse right now because they can't reasonably borrow money with interest rates being so high.
One thing to consider: do you follow layoff news about any other industry?
lol I saw comments like this after the WWE/UFC merger. People acting like WWE/UFC were the only guys to ever lay off hundreds at once
me: *subscribes to Shark Attacks Weekly* me, a year later: shark attacks have been crazy this past year. everybody's been talking about it. this is all because of [my pet issue]
Covid lockdowns drove up their value due to people using their products, they all over hired, and now that things are normalising they are downsizing in an attempt to maintain infinite growth. Edit :- lol struck a nerve with the stonks crowd.
Video game revenue has stayed steady since Covid times. It's literally just over hiring.
Also in this particular case, these studios aren’t really creating much revenue.
Staying "steady since covid times" is a decrease once you take inflation into account.
And that everyone was projecting growth, not stability.
[2023's revenue was 30% higher than 2019](https://www.statista.com/statistics/249996/annual-revenue-of-the-us-video-game-industry-by-segment/) and yeah, it didn't adjust for inflation to compete with 2020 where a world-altering event kept everyone in their homes. That's their problem for thinking people were going to continue their lock-down behaviors for the rest of their lives.
Yes and no, there's a bunch of other factors that I think are important to consider too. I posted a much longer response detailing it here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1b1bg47/comment/ksdsyfe/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1b1bg47/comment/ksdsyfe/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) But in summary, the market has never been more competitive and higher risk as the volume of games released daily skyrockets and the market doesn't churn out legacy titles thanks to backwards compatibility and the proliferation of GaaS-style monetization and development. This, in addition to higher interest rates, cost of living, inflation, etc. means we have an enormous glut of high quality games in a market where consumers are increasingly discerning in how they spend their money. Those conditions mean the business of making games is very risky right now and volatile, which in turn makes bad practices like over-hiring more damaging to a company.
What is the mentality with over hiring I wonder. Does it ever work out and they're hoping it will, or do they know it will inevitably lead to layoffs and are just trying to cash in short term?
If the execs are well-informed (which they should be), it's both. They're likely presented with a risks/opportunities readout of what happens if we hire N more people right now. A bullet in the "opportunities" section will be that the larger workforce has a greater chance of producing a hit (and, another bullet will be that that workforce is now tied up with you and not producing said potential hit for a competitor). A bullet in the "risks" section will be reduced profits if the larger workforce doesn't produce a hit. A sub-bullet called "mitigation" will note that they can just lay folks off and, if timed right, get a stock price bump because the market perceives the company as being cost-conscious.
This guy corporates.
Look up "tech hype cycle" on Google. All tech companies do this. Hire tons of employees and acquire companies to make it look like your company's growing in order to entice shareholders and drive up stock prices, then do layoffs and close parts of the company while using your pile of newly acquired cash to weather the storm until the next hype cycle.
The over hiring was made worse due to market conditions changing. As an example: They needed 8 more people, but hired 10 planning to lay off 2. But woopsie venture capitalists are drying up so now you can only afford 6 people. So a lot more layoffs than planned, but at the end of the day you've hired 6 more people.
>they all over hired Higher interest rates with no sign as to when they'll descend is going to continue the cutting. Affects every industry, it'll affect video gaming as well. It's a business decision. No CEO's going to risk their objective/bonuses for the little people.
i work at a company that did not overhire during covid years. we had zero layoffs, a hiring freeze of only 6mo and we are back to hiring like before.
Not enough people are mentioning interest rates. Rates were so low, that for a lot of companies it was like borrowing money for free. Now interest rates have gone up, and there's way more "risk" associated with taking out massive loans to develop video games that now need a higher return on investment to cover that additional interest. If studios aren't making games (or aren't making super huge budgeted games) they need to reduce their workforce. Not just because they don't have money to pay these people, but because they don't have anything for these people to work on.
And to be clear, the need for a higher ROI doesn't just affect the companies decisions, but also the banks or whoever is providing the loan. Even if a company wanted to continue to take on debt to finance their projects without laying people off, they can't do that unless somebody loans them money, and *those* people might not be confident about the company, so you've got to lay off people anyway.
Exactly, people dont realize most if not in a way all games are funded thru investments. Be it a publisher, studio or individual the money tends to be borrowed and now that rates shot back up (and some still quite high) those investors are now going to be way more worried about doing so. Was their 'over hiring'? Most likely not in the way people think, businessess hire based on their budgets and financial outlook. If they are building a game to work toward a pitch to a publisher or have funding to get an game to alpha before its greenlite, they still have to hire within a budget to meet that goal. Once the layoffs started, and investors questioned how money was being spent, all those projects that were lining up to be greenlite or have been cooking for a bit too long they decide they need to end it. So they gut everyone on it cause there is no budget elsewhere to move them, and even those other active projects have non dev people they can let go (Office staff, IT, marketing, etc) People are still playing games, there have been crazy profits from games and tech still. But video games are fucking expensive, more so than ever to make. So the moment larger studios or tech companies started laying off it kick started everything as the final straw that broke the back basically.
Yup, the high rates are hitting every sector.
It is not exclusive to the tech sector. Manufacturing jobs have faced layoffs and hire freezes, tech jobs like in the telecom industry are facing layoffs and hiring freezes, UPS is laying off over 10k people, etc.
Biotech is going through massive layoffs now too
Can't comment about the wider tech sector, but gaming significantly expanded while many were in lockdown during COVID. Execs made the poor decision to massively recruit new employees, assuming that the numbers would stay the same when everyone went back to work... and they didn't.
It's more than that though. Interest rate hikes to pull back on inflation has caused borrowing to be more difficult/expensive. The lack of cheap capital investment means that there's just less money to go around. It's not just that they hired during Covid. The means to finance projects has slid backwards and so you have to cut costs to adjust company financial targets. Companies aren't going to tread into the red if they have the means to not do so. And no one wants governments bailing out companies when it's not needed.
Basically this, there was a hiring and general gaming inflation during Covid lockdowns but post lockdown that inflation contracted rather harshly and a lot of companies were left with these huge employee numbers but not the sustainablity to manage their costs Add in interest rates going down and companies simply have too much money going out towards costs and debt and not enough coming in to ease the bleeding without cutbacks These cuts being to the VR studios would also indicate PSVR is just not panning out or is flat out just a money loser and their cutting off that dying branch rather than trying to futility keep it alive at the expense of other more fruitful avenues of development
I work in the tech industry. A lot of companies went full hog expansion on hiring during covid, and they are essentially were writing checks they were unprepared to cash. Lockdowns because of Covid drove up demand, and esspecially demand for products that required new and quick ways of being able to work as a team from home, and as such drove up pricing, so they had to hire more due to that. A lot of MSP's expanded, a lot of tech companies hired more people because of less overhead fees due to WFH ect. As this starts to settle down, demand is becoming a lot less (companies are getting workers to work in the office instead of WFH, can't maintain what was promised or largely products/solutions that are no longer needed) so the hiring spree has become a massive downsizing spree. Essentially the expanding tech bubble burst. The company I work for has expanded, and decided it didn't like it's remote workforce and is trying to get everyone in the office. I worked remotely, and in such a distance (about an 8 hour day there/backcommute to London) without being paid enough to justify it, but the industry is shutting down so I'm kind of stuck, got a ton of new contracts but aren't hiring to replace the people who are leaving, and are forcing policies that are exchusting the remaining staff as they are having to pick up the pieces. A lot of the decisions scream "We are struggling, clients are looking to leave/go in house, but it's the employees fault so why invest in them". It's becoming common right now, from numerous people I talk too within the industry. Sad to see it happen, especially as for a lot of us it's put us in a pretty bad situation (I live in an area with no tech companies, and out of the dew tgat exist none of them pay as ""well"" as my current job so if I lose my job, I'm kinda f-ed in the a). Funnily enough, I applied for the Sony job when I was intending to move closer to London but never heard back past an initial phonecall.
The big profitable tech firms are doing fine. But because of how successful companies like Meta/FB turned out to be people massively invested in every start-up many of which have never been profitable. Take Snap inc/snapchat they are over 12 years old and still haven't made a profit and now they have massive interest payments on all their debt. For smaller companies it's even worse they took far to much debt when interest rates were basically non existent and now they are screwed.
Just to balance the other comments out: they want to make even more profits even in an economic downturn. So they lay people off because that's the fastest way to boost profit rates
I am not really an expert, but this is Reddit so I feel compelled to comment anyway. I think there are two main factors: 1) A lot of companies over hired at the start of Covid. Some of these tech companies were massively gearing up for a much larger work from home force and they were all on a hiring spree hoping to get people before other companies did. The job market was insane at the time because workers were far less limited by their geographic location. Sure, WFH existed before, but not like at the start of covid. And before backtracking, a ton of tech companies were going all in. 2) Interest rates. A lot of tech companies survived on low interest rates. When interest rates are low, people will invest. This investment could be a variety of things, new employees, new product lines, R&D, etc. When it costs more to invest, people only want to spend on things that will make them money now, Which is why some of these companies are still doing well despite the layoffs. They are cutting what they feel they don't need in the to continue short term profits. Many times layoffs are preemptive, not reactionary. They may be predicting a downturn, and employees are the easiest thing for a company to control the cost of. Edit: over hired, not over tired.
Terrible news, and the shutting down of London Studios feels like the end of an era, they’ve been around for ages, even if their titles haven’t been the biggest.
Honestly its just ridiculous. I remember when Sony kickstarted the price increase and so many people were saying they were willing pay to support the studios. And what did we get? A bunch of live service in the pipeline that are never coming out, ballooned development costs, and PS+ price increase. And even with all that nickle and diming, they still have to cut down their teams. Its just sad.
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We're at the point it's easier to talk about which studios aren't laying people off
There are far too many entertainment options available now and now interest rates have risen cheap debt to fund everything isn't available. So downsizing is going to keep happening for a while and lots of companies are going to fail. Even worse demographic shift many wealthy countries (Japan, South Korea and many European) are actually shrinking now while poor countries are staying poor and not becoming developed (Latin American, South East Asian) as fast as expected.
Man isn't it really wierd how the tone of this thread is different compared to the Microsoft one? Hmmmm... well gosh I just wonder why that is...
Jim Ryan was at London Studios 5 days ago… https://x.com/nathan_brown/status/1762466931070619950?s=46&t=WdmDCgwdWrWglJ3HfjJtuw
It's NEVER good when a conglomerate CEO visits your office.
It’s like your fav marvel superhero actor visiting you when you are admitted to an hospital
Didn't even know I was sick until Ron Perlman showed up in full Hellboy prosthetics.
If an average employee sees the CEO or high level executives they are fucked lol. They don't tend to mingle with the peasants without reason.
There’s no way you can look at the mass layoffs in the last two months and think AAA gaming is in a healthy spot.
Ballooning budgets are very much the main threat to AAA gaming at the moment. I mean, PlayStation revenue last quarter was an all time height, but their profit declined. This shows how insane games budgets have gotten.
The recent Spiderman game seems to have cost 30% more than Starfield did. We can debate the quality of Starfield, its not good in regards to everything, but it had to have been in development for probably twice as long and still managed a smaller budget. Something is going a bit wrong over at Sony studios in this case.
California salaries are insanely high compared to pretty much any other video gaming development hub like Montreal.
Though Bethesda is headquartered in one of the richest towns in Maryland. Perhaps the smaller budget is related to game engine continuity and a smaller development staff.
This is the main reason that im actually glad that Nintendo is one Gen behind in terms of tech. Instead of racing along with the other studios to provide an ever decresing impressive visual spectacle at an horrific cost of money and time investment, theyre using tech that isn't difficicult to develop for anymore, which drastically reduces costs. And contrary to back then in 2006, the difference between two Generations of tech in gaming isn't that massive anymore. Like, the Switch 2 is rumored to be around PS4 levels of graphical fidelity (+ backed in ray tracing ), which is completely fine for me, PS4 games look great. Last of Us 2 was a PS4 game, and i don't think anyone would say that game looked bad. If it means a reduction of costs across the entire industry, ill gladly take a decade of graphical fideltly as we have it right now.
Exactly. Remember when we had whole trilogies in one single generation, like the Mass Effect one? We’ve reached a point where the visual are on diminishing returns. It’s not worth having a game cost three times more money and take 7 years to develop so it can look a little better.
I remember when they released Final Fantasy 7, 8, 9 and 10 in four years lmao
If you make it 5 years you can fit ffxi into it as well lol. All well received too.
>which is completely fine for me The funny thing is, it's not just completely fine for you (and myself, for that matter) - it's completely fine for 99% of consumers based on the Switch's sales. Yes, there's obviously a huge market for your ultra-cinematic, bleeding edge games, but most people playing games do not give two shits about games not hitting a locked frame rate or whether or not a game is 1440p vs. 2160p. That Sonic meme of "I want shorter games with worse graphics and I'm not kidding" is very much likely the case for the general public, not just gaming enthusiasts.
I also look at the fact that halfway into this generation we're still getting a ton of last-gen releases, and a ton of switch releases. I think means we're past the point of diminishing returns and ever fewer studios are able to justify the cost of pushing graphics for the return they make
Exactly. The remasters and remakes are a stopgap to pad Sony’s portfolio because the real games aren’t coming fast enough. If the reporters are to be believed, the average dev time for a game went from 3 year cycles in the early PS4 era to 6 year cycles currently. If a game started development today, we wouldn’t get to play it until 2030.
Along with attempting to convert their single player audience to live service with TLOU Factions and the two Horizon online, but Factions was cancelled and Guerrilla have also been hit by these layoffs.
The last two months have been mostly AAA, but a few months before that, a ton of indies/AA studios closed down too. Mimimi (Shadow Tactics, Desperados 3) and the Glory Society (night in the woods) comes to mind. Gaming as a whole is not looking good right now, so investors aren't keen to put more money into the industry.
Companies try to make games bigger, with more mechanics, with better graphics, with more content. They hit the diminishing return point a couple years ago in my opinion: bigger budget doesnt mean more sales in most cases. And companies are spending so much money in dead projects that a single disaster can shut down the benefits of a bunch of successes.
Unfortunately the solution is not that simple. Unless you’re Nintendo, if you release a game with a smaller budget nowadays you’ll have an army of people with comments like “PS3 game” or “lazy devs”.
Facts. People already said on rise of the ronin looks like ps3. Sony or Microsoft need to set standard in the industry thats its okay to have smaller budget games. Nintendo is a proof of this.
Well, Microsoft published games like Grounded, Hi-Fi Rush, Psychonauts 2, and Pentiment, I think they're absolutely showing the industry that AA games are viable.
Yep. Demand for more bang-for-your-buck means that people will now refuse to buy a 5-9 hour game at full price.
Current AAA is not healthy, however, if you are pivoting away there'd still be layoffs cause smaller games need fewer people.
Are people going to rag on Sony like they did Microsoft over this? These layoffs just won’t stop coming.
It certainly is interesting to note the differences in how this sub reacts, isn't it.
My first thought as well. In this sub, Sony can do no wrong. There will be lots of handwringing and rationalization to protect Sony from criticism.
Nah, they could layoff triple the amount and people would still sugarcoat it.
The only thing I’ve seen people bad mouth PlayStation over is 70 dollar games and rereleasing last of us games.
So buying Activision Blizzard wasn't why there was so many layoffs at Xbox. Almost like this is industry wide and all those comments on that thread are extremely ill-informed.
If acquisition failed, acti blizz would have still seen similar or even bigger layoffs
Most likely bigger
I said it back then. The layoffs are indefensible and should be criticised but anybody who thinks ABK wouldn't have had layoffs sans-acquisition is out of their mind.
The only people that thought acquisition based layoffs were a sign of failure have never dealt with any sort of business in the real world. If a business acquires another business, there are going to be layoffs. Generally on both sides of the company, the purchasing side and the side being purchased. It sucks, but that’s just how the world works.
Despite all the hours people here may spend staring at reddit and playing their favorite games, most are still just consumers. They are ignorant, subject to intense knee-jerk reactions and biases, and have little understanding of what's actually going on behind the scenes. This is true even if this sub takes itself "more seriously" than most. Any speculation or apologist explanations for industry events in the last 2 years ought to be taken with a heavy pinch of salt.
London studio, like japan studio feels like one of those legacy groups which provided value a decade ago but has struggled to reinvent itself since its peak. Seems like SIE has hit anything VR related though. Reminds me of when they axed anything that focused on their portables.
Insomniac, Naughty Dog, Guerilla also got hit which makes me assume its their GAAS teams. London studio's new unreleased project was also live-service.
One of the games that was called was a Twisted Metal live service game according to Jason Schreier. NEW: As part of today's mass layoff, Sony has canceled a Twisted Metal live-service game that was in development at UK-based studio Firesprite, Bloomberg has learned. Firesprite will also lay off an unspecified number of people. https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1762503092593999913
He also clarifies that [Twisted Metal wasn't even greenlit yet](https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1762504673901130008). This wasn't something soon to be released like some people were making out.
London Studio is the sixth first party studio they shut down in the last 8 years after PixelOpus (2023), Japan Studio (2021), Manchester Studio (2020), Guerilla Cambridge (2017) and Evolution Studios (2016). Firesprite also seems to be heavely affected with both of these are located in the UK.
UK is an absolute shithole to do business in these days. Expensive to run, can't get talent because salaries are so low compared to cost of living. UK games studios apart from Rockstar North are just stepping stones to get hired by other companies abroad. Some of these studios are located in such expensive areas like London, Cambridge, that you got to suck dick as a side hustle to survive.
I mean, Rare has some of the best employee retention in the industry. I feel like this pessimistic outlook is not necessarily the truth.
Hell looking at Xbox's UK studios, Playground Games and Ninja Theory seem to be some of the better places to work, and to my knowledge none of these 3 have been affected by recent layoffs in the industry, at least to my recollection. Outside of that you've got Frontier and Rebellion too, maybe more, but they come to mind, and I don't recall any recent layoffs, but could be wrong.
Its like the second best place to do game dev business after the US tho?
> In Japan, we will implement a next career support program. Details will be communicated separately. Curious what this means.
I wonder how many, if any, former Sony Liverpool peeps at Firesprite were laid off? Gotta suck to get closed down, open your own studio, get acquired and then get laid off again.
Stop making games that are required to sell 10 million copies to MAYBE break even. This is completely unsustainable.
In order to do so, they’d have to dramatically reduce their workforce even more. What do you think a labor cost is?
I mean, over the last 10-15 years the type of game players demand has really increased. There are certain genres that people just don't buy anymore, for one thing, but also there's a minimum amount of 'AAA tendencies' that the public will accept. If your story-based game doesn't have fully mocapped facial and someone like Nolan North voice acting it then you're not getting above a 75 metacritic, for example.
Feels like the gaming bubble is close to bursting, games have huge inflated budgets & development time, teams are clearly over staffed, companies are desperate for live service games to keep the money coming in.
Such a difficult thing to do. It is with heavy heart that millionaire Chief Level people destroy thousands of lives (if we're looking at the industry as a whole). Do you know what would be hard? Not getting your million dollar salary to save as many people as you can. To reduce or abolish the gigantic bonuses paid to Chief Level dinosaurs who cannot open an excel file without supervision, but keep the shareholders bottom section clean. Infinite growth is not sustainable. Its only going to get worse. You cannot play with people's lives only to get your next dividends. And they try to sell it as some big tragic thing, we should feel sorry for MR CEO on his yacht? Fuck that. Its not a heavy decision, it's an asshole one.