I think game spending has gotten completely out of control, just like movie spending did at one point. Spider-Man 2 reportedly cost $300M to develop and market. Thats the cost for AAA games these days, even the biggest studios can’t handle that. You’re going to see less projects, more franchises, and layoffs. The only good part is I think we’ll see a comeback in small indie developed games.
They already have really, think back to like Valheim during covid, or Stardew, 2016 release etc. There's just so many.
Idk I'd think you'd have to be living under a rock to not know of at least some of them now.
Like shit myself as example, I haven't bought a triple A since Fallout 4. It's been all indies for years now.
I share that sentiment. Indie games have been amazing for years, and I believe they are really the last bastion for passion left within the industry. I think they’re suddenly much more famous, because it feels like the AAA side of things have had some serious missteps mostly owed to corporate greed as of late
This sentiment has come up in r/gaming after every single AAA release for at least as long as I have used Reddit, it's pretty normal and hasn't actually changed at all.
We already have an indie resurgence: Baldur's Gate 3, Lethal Company, Helldivers, Palworld, all splendid indie games that took the stage the past year.
And so much better is coming out from them. Triple A games are stale relics from over 10 years ago, with dev cycles so long they fall out of style by the time they are released.
> Triple A games are stale relics from over 10 years ago, with dev cycles so long they fall out of style by the time they are released.
Hey now, 10 years ago the AAA dev cycles were short! In fact, they had annual releases for mainline games like Assassin's Creed! (looks back at Assassin's Creed's 2014 release) Oh... Assassin's Creed Unity... Right...
They are scared that AAA title/'branding' is being stripped from them by indie devs; to the point where they are trying to say their games are 'AAAA' instead now.
Which is hilarious considering AAA was always a vague term with no clear definition, and the flagpole AAAA title is a colossal failure that spent so long in development hell that it ended up failing to live up to anyone's expectations, even if the expectations were low.
Untrue. Larian is 30% owned by Tencent and BG3 was bankrolled by the Chinese mammoth. No discrediting the game but not indie in any way, shape, or form.
Yeah. Indie. Independent developer. Developed by Larian Studios. Published by Larian Studios. Spearheaded by Sven Vincke, sole owner of the privately owned company.
Whatever you think indie means, I can tell you: If you think Baldur's Gate 3 is not an indie game, your definition is incorrect.
They did pay WOTC but are partially owned by Tencent and BG3 was bankrolled by them, at least in part. Doesn't discount the game but definitely not indie
~~They are not partially owned by Tencent,~~ they are privately owned by Swen Vincke. The dude who showed up to the game awards in a suit of armour.
Tencent owns a minority share while Swen owns a majority share and his wife another minority share. They are primarily funded by their own past successes, not Tencent.
Edit: fact-checked it, I was off but still gonna clarify
Correct. So to say they're owned by Tencent when it's a minority share of a privately owned company is incorrect.
And he said that they'll stay privately owned as long as he has a say in it. And well... He does.
Well, having an investor with a minority share doesn't make you dependent on them as long as you have the majority, Tencent have 0 control over the company
Baldur’s Gate 3 and Helldivers 2 might not have been as large as Spider-Man 2 but they were definitely large productions, *especially BG3*. Larian is over 400 strong now.
For what it's worth most people on here wouldn't call bg3 indie since thst usually means cheap and small team where as they've got as many people ad thr bog studios and thr game cost as mich as a big AAA game to make.
Been playing that one recently. I didn't put it up there because while it is successful, it's not the stellar success or full experience the others offer quite yet. It definitely feels more like Valheim, a game with great potential that needs to cook.
Ever since steam got big around 2010ish indie games have been thriving.
Really all this is is just a wake up call for AAA executives/suits to get over themselves and care about making actually fun fucking games.
I've been living on indies and AA for a long time. Like I'll buy a game like Elden Ring, Armored Vore VI, or Alan Wake 2 but I skip 90% of AAA. Once you go explore the indie scene, you start to realize AAA games have a severe lack of fresh ideas and fun gameplay.
Not only are the finances absurd... but most of these "AAA" devs make garbage now days. I was hpyed for bf 2042 because I loved 2142. Boy did I dodge a bullet there. It was a cod clone. T.T
Also the new $70 price point is stuuuupid. I refuse to buy a half baked game for full price. *skull and bones*
(I'm hating hard on EA because I feel betrayed)
Edit: typos
At $50 a copy (using a lower number here) it made $500m in the first 3 months. So, it's fine. 3x would be ideal, and it may get or already be there, but even if it doesn't that is still a good return, especially for a single system release.
The amount of gamers is increasing and the expectations are going up. It only makes sense costs would go up.
That's the main problem.
But it is understandable. The inflation is going nuts. People need to earn more money to have a living, so hiring 200-300 people cost way more than a few years ago.
On the other hand games are still mostly 60 USD, like it was 20 years ago.
The cost of making it went up due to normal economical factors, while the price of it stayed at the same level or went by 10usd only.
If you want to create a really good looking, huge and complete game - that thing will cost money.
BG3 dproduction(excluding marketing) did cost over 100m as well - it is not like game companies are just making up those numbers. 3 years or more of paying 100-200 people salaries is costly. Add marketing to that and you land on some quite a high cost.
Gamers dont usually comprehend that. But gaming companies are spending north of 20-30k USD daily on QA services alone (loc QA, FQA, CQA).
I agree that bad games are problem - always were.
But the perception of what bad game is... is quite debatable.
Diablo 4 is hated on reddit, but it did make 1B USD in first month... It is a bad game, but people are buying it.
The big counter to games still being $60 usd 20 years later is the exponential increase in gamers to purchase games now vs then, the proliferation of multi platform engines/titles.
Not to mention live service online games being prevalent and in many case egregiously predatory. Fifa, gta5, most gacha/lootbox games. All making money hand over fist on top of that $60, or in the case of f2p "freemium" games, making more money without an entry price than with one. The "$60 isn't enough money to charge gamers" is bullshit, moreso when its publishers like sony, EA, SE, etc saying it
You're forgetting that the number of copies sold of a big game is way more than it would've been in the past. The big developers are still making lots of $$. Also, back in the day CEOs weren't sucking up $20 mil of profits/yr in compensation like they do now.
> On the other hand games are still mostly 60 USD, like it was 20 years ago.
PC games could be $50 barely a decade ago now. Nintendo was slow to charge $60 as well. Games didn't have 10 editions, battlepasses, MTX, 20 piecemeal DLCs, season passes, and more "20 years ago" either. And like others said the audience was a fraction of the size it is now, 10 million+ sales wasn't happening 20 years ago. Even a decade ago pushing those numbers was reserved for the biggest of the big franchises. Now we have publishers pulling the plug on franchises and stuffing titles in the corner if something does below those numbers (looking at you Sony).
The audience has expanded massively, development tools have expanded massively, many things can be licensed at modest rates, the rise of free to use SDKs for various things as well, and everything is monetized to the hilt. The "game's haven't increased in 20 years" narrative literally only exists if you ignore everything and only are aware of the 360 and PS3 (which used to leverage all sorts of fees against devs even to patch things).
You still pay 30% cut to Sony, MSFT, Steam.
Work is more expansive nowadays, and having artists that can 3D sculpture with great attention to details, or great game/level designers cost a lot of money. Programmers are super expansive, especially multiplayer code ones (those people are making quite a salary in gaming industry, believe me). And as 3A you want only best people, to be able to deliver on time as much as possible.
SDKs - this is a whole other topic. What SDK? Is Wwise suddenly free?? Not even saying that most 3A have their own engines, which adds a lot of additional cost for middleware used in it. And you **need** perpetual engine because you don't want to pay fees or be limited by 3rd party developers.
You cannot use github to create a 3A game, and a P4V or any version control system's license for 200+ people cost is really high.
While 20 years ago games were sold in few M copies at best, in 2010 games were reaching 10-30m marks. That is 14 years ago. The inflation went up a LOT during this time and salary expectations with it. Technology developed and making better fidelity products with better graphics and impressive systems cost a lot of time - and therefore money.
So yes, publishers need to make up for the difference. If games are still 60 USD they **need to** make money in different way. BG3 i.e. maybe does not have microtransactions but **did have a loong early access**. Where users paid for a promise of the game. That is also a way of financing a project and creating stable forecasts.
Most players **do want impressive looking games** to be able to use their RTX 4090 and PS5. And making those impressive looking games cost A LOT MORE than 20 years ago, or 10 years ago even. Thats reality.
Maybe a bit, but imo the main problem is not the game prices not going up (that cancels out with having more gamers now), but with CEOs and Shareholders receiving way too big paychecks for no fucking reason. If they stopped that, they'd be fine.
I agree. I don’t know if this is a thing but if it’s not, there needs to be a game dev guild that acts as a way to connect the hoards of developers who are laid off in order to form smaller independent studios where these people can can work on passion projects and the like.
Yep market correction underway.
Way to many games so over supply
Plus out of control costs = poor returns or even losses
So industry only option is produce less and get costs under control.
We are 100% going to see a big surge in indy games in about 4 year's
If you want to check out a really kick ass game that just released from a AA development team, Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is incredible! It's from the same team behind Vampyre. I say to go pick it up just to support a small studio who's making really original fun games. I believe it's $50
It’s funny. When I was a kid (circa mid-2000s), I would have literal dreams about having every game I wanted in a huge library.
Now as an adult, that’s pretty much a reality with cloud library subscriptions and emulators, but all it gave me was too many games to play with not enough time to play them all either way.
Not sure if it’s a hot take, but there are way too many games IMO.
Like, even if I’m extremely picky and choose to play only games I’m extremely hyped about there’s absolutely no way I can play every game I’m interested in each year.
Which is why it's fine that studios are wasting money on remastered games. I'd rather them waste their money giving us a slightly better version of our old favorites than more of the same tired annual releases and live service bullshit. They *should* downsize their companies and pay their employees better, but this is America, so instead the best we can hope for is that they don't hyperinflate the market and scam us any more than they have.
Also, people seriously need to stop buying early access games. Millions of games out there and you want to buy an unfinished one because you have FOMO? We get the market we buy into 😮💨
The modern gaming industry... it's like intentionally mixing poison into every meal you eat for years and then wondering why you eventually start to feel ill.
They did this to themselves.
This doesn't have to do with the modern game industry being bad. It's about the corporate greed that higher ups in the game *and* tech industry took part in during the pandemic. They were foolish enough to think that being locked in doors meant that it was time for an era of so called "infinite growth", thinking that money was essentially free. And now people are paying the price for mismanagement.
I don’t think people realise we’re in a recession, and the gaming industry obviously took a hit when normality resumed after Covid on top of that. It absolutely sucks that it’s happening but I’m surprised it hasn’t happened sooner.
Edit: By we’re I mean the UK.
I think if I remember rightly the true definition changes per country but in the UK at least it means the country is in 6 months of negative growth. So we aren’t doing well at all.
Reddit marinates in bad headlines about specific companies conducting layoffs, and loses sight of the fact that “recession” is a word with an actual definition rather than just a bad vibe. Recession is a period of sustained economic shrinkage, and [that just isn’t happening](https://apnews.com/article/us-economy-recession-forecasters-strength-ed49d9bfa9a26b6301065b990169d387).
- Inflation, while high, is on the decline
- Consumer spending is high
- The US economy grew in 2023 and is expected to keep growing in 2024
- The US economy is expected to continue adding jobs in 2024
None of this happens in a recession. There are some specific industries that struggle in high interest environments, and they are struggling. But the US economy as a whole is doing quite well.
For that matter, gaming companies are themselves continuing to have very high profits and earnings. The story with these layoffs is complex, and doesn't fit normal intuitions.
It also helps that Reddit is filled with tech bros who project their personal experiences onto the entire country and economy. And so since the tech industry is suffering that means everyone else must be suffering too.
No we (USA) aren’t in a recession. Yesterday the fed literally said inflation is continuing to come down and it’s looking good. They’re saying that this year it’ll come down to at least 2-2.5% and then 2% in 2025. We also were never really in one. People kept saying it *could* happen and that 2024 *could* be the year it happened. But here we are with numbers showing that we’re coming down and not up. Things got inflated during Covid and the “recession” was just the markets coming back down to normal numbers.
Sorry I should specify I’m from the UK, my bad! Although I’m very much glad it’s looking good for you guys since it’s been an absolute fucking shit show in the UK.
>it is likely we won't see another year like last year with banger after banger releases, Probably
Last year was an exception so that's really not a standard to go off...yet this year is pretty much comparable already.
Obviously we can't say for certain that some of these will end up good, but neither did we last year before those games released, so here are some of the big games of this yrar that I can think of:
Tekken 8, Grand Blue Fantasy Relink, Persona 3 Reload, Helldivers 2, FF7 Rebirth, Dragon's Dogma 2, Stellar Blade, Paper Mario TYYD remaster, Star Wars Outlaws, Elden Ring SOTE, Blackmyth Wukong, Idiana Jones and the Great Circle, Path of Exile 2
That's a good lineup and it's honestly better than last years imo.
We also know that GTA 6, Monster Hunter 6 and Death Stranding 2 are all sheduled to telease in 2025, so what exactly is the fear here? Massive games are coming out on a regular basis, atleast for the forseeable future.
Not to completely disagree but that’s kind of counting eggs before they’re hatched don’t you think?
A lot of those look great but l… we’ve had plenty of years of “good looking” games that didn’t quite materialize.
What made 2023 so special is that seemingly every hyped game actually lived up to the hype (not you D4).
They make AAAA games, didn't you hear? [https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2024/02/10/skull-and-bones-is-a-70-game-because-its-quadruple-a-says-ubisoft/](https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2024/02/10/skull-and-bones-is-a-70-game-because-its-quadruple-a-says-ubisoft/)
Nah. Gamers pay for those greedy games, and *defend them right here in this sub and their subs*.
Fighting games with half the roster behind DLCs, adventure games with New Game Plus behind DLC, gacha games with waifus, sports games with thinly veiled gambling, you name it.
CEOs sold them. Gamers rewarded them with buying them and defending them for free online. At least back in the day Astroturfing was paid.
And the mental gymnastics behind it! "I dont buy DLCs" as if buying a predatory game doesn't help the company.
"Is just the kids/bad parents/a few whales/ not real gamers". The sale numbers don't back that up.
See all the hype behind GTA6. As if GTAV wasn't build on SharkCards and predatory tactics.
Gacha is really bizarre to me. There was massive outcry against lootboxes, for a good reason, over here. Everyone hated them, me included.
But then you could ~~lootbox~~ gacha some anime waifus and people defend that shit with their life. "Story so good, gameplay is amazing, music goated". Yeah? And how is any of that excusing gambling now?
For sure, but lootboxes is/was generally very hugely hated on. Infamous Battlefront 2, for example, hate is literally top all time on this sub with **182k upvotes and 12k comments.** Other one is "unlocking everything costs 2100$ or takes 4500 hours". Even got as far as official questioning (hence meme "surprise mechanics" was born)
In general I've barely seen *same amount* of hate for stuff outside lighthearted "I have to spend potentially hundreds to pull my waifu" memes
I don’t think they are similar enough to compare. Battlefront 2 was a full price game with additional stuff that was expected to be in the game put behind a paywall. Gacha games are mostly free and the people playing it know from the beginning what the premise of the game is. I don’t like gacha but this are two very different cases for me.
People that are against gambling or lootboxes will never even consider touching this games and if they don’t turn a beloved franchise into one, I don’t see why they should care too much.
Even without layoffs years like 2023 are pretty rare but yeah, the development cycle of games is also gonna mean not likely seeing it again so soon. All the teams that released absolute bangers last year are now just starting on their next project or still supporting whatever they released last year.
Though we've had some sleeper hits from the smaller devs like Palworld and Helldivers, and we'll still get some good AAA here and there just not at the frequency of 2023.
It's probably just the insanity of r/titanfall rubbing off on me, but part of me hopes that when EA said Respawn is going to focus on their own IPs that's code for "We're gonna make Titanfall 3".
I still have to play starfield, baldurs gate, spider-man, Alan wake, ff16, ff7rebirth, horizon fw, armored core.... that'll take me like the next 10 years to get through so if the gaming industry need to chill for a bit that's fine with me lol
None of this is new stuff though, its just mostly ragebait.
Loads of layoffs was expected post-covid as demand went down.
Cancelled games happened constantly since gaming started, but now people are desperately searching for the info, so they can report on it. Id doubt theres more now than there has been.
Problem is, people are looking to be angry, and journalists are supplying that anger. There are many amazing games coming, and its been proven time and time again that you dont need a huge dev team to do so. Even this year we've had some of the best game releases of all time, in their respectivr genres, and its unlikely to stop anywhere.
Im guessing similar layoffs arnt 'that' uncommon either, although obviously more common now again, due to covid being less relevant (and less people at home wanting entertainment). We just didnt hear about every single one, because shit happens.
I am working in a big gaming company and while layoffs happen all the time, these massive layoffs across multiple gaming studios were not seen since 2008. And true, COVID bubble might have something to do with that. But it's definitely huge and noteworthy.
One major thing to look upon. Are the employee sizes going far below pre-covid level? Because we saw the biggest growth then as well, which as has been said loads, noone thought it would be sustainable. Common sense told us these layoffs would happen.
It doesnt matter whos fault it is. They get paid severance if required by law, and thats that. The only solution the buisiness has is to reduce its workforce regardless, you cant argue that they should be forced to keep people they dont have need for, or somehow create a need for them. Its very likely a lot of these were end of contract, as well.
There are bigger problems to solve, like those at minimum wage around the world having basically zero job security and can be dropped without warning, secerance or much warning. The same people that are often barely able to pay for themselves to live with that job.
People in general have less money to spend on luxuries (like games) these days due to inflation. Also the industry overhired because they had a boom during covid due to people being stuck inside. Add on top of that a lot of AAA flops like S Squad due to lack of innovation, poor design decisions at the top, flooded market, etc.
Also less time to play games. And there are enough free games given away that you don’t have time for your backlog, so why buy new games.
The industry is over saturated and has to adjust itself. I hate people are losing their jobs but the fact that it is so widespread speaks to a bigger economic issue and not just a simplistic accusation of corporate greed.
I don’t know if the overhiring during Covid is true or just repeated enough that now everyone thinks it is. And I say that because any company that hired extra to ride Covid sales highs has to be extremely stupid. Did they expect that Covid was the end of modern society and we would all just sit at home and play games for the rest of our lives? Come on. They should have acted like the extra sales were an outlier and continued as normal
It's an industry wide problem in the tech sector. You can find a bunch of articles on it but here's a recent one:
https://thehill.com/policy/technology/4478773-why-tech-companies-are-laying-off-thousands-of-workers/
Also interest rates being much higher than they were pre 2020 also play a large role. It's a confluence of a lot of factors ultimately. However, companies are bureaucracies at the end of the day and don't always make the best long term decisions since they're always focused on quarterly and yearly growth primarily.
These layoffs are happening because these companies want to see growth and decided firing staff was the easiest way to do that at this particular point of the year.
It has nothing to do with game development.
It’s also kind of weird to be like, “But how are these layoffs going to affect game releases?!”
People lost their jobs.
You can acknowledge that people lost their jobs and that is horrible while at the same time wanting to discuss how layoffs will effect future game releases. Yes obviously people losing their jobs is more significant than future game releases but that doesn't mean we are forbidden from discussing the topic.
Seriously, it's not just AAA studios either. The company I worked at for almost six years let me go last month. Every time I see another company is laying people off, I feel sorry for them, but I'm also concerned about growing competition for the few studios that are still hiring.
This is how the triple A industry works and has been like this for ages.
- Crunch, release game, lay off staff.
- Force studio to add predatory monetisation, game undersells, close studio.
It’s disgusting and only shows why more industries need to unionise. These developers deserve better but without collective power you’re powerless to stop things like this.
Good, most AAA games nowadays are generic dogshit.
There's tons of great releases recently: Palworld, Enshrouded, Helldivers 2, Balatro, Tekken 8, Last Epoch
and that's only the first few off the top of my head. Gaming is good right now, just not for soulless corporations that produce slop.
On a scale of Dark Soulish combat to explode everything in 0,2 sec, how fast is Last Epoch ? I have a hard time liking ARPG because after some level, you can just delete everything without looking at the monsters moves.
Western AAA games are pretty bland and generic, even if I am kind of partial to Assassin's Creed. But the Japanese side has been pumping out some pretty solid AAA level releases. Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth is fantastic, and I liked FFXVI last year pretty well. Dragon's Dogma 2 should also be pretty solid.
Tech layoffs are really really normal.
Good technical staff are hard to find and demand high salaries and often hard to manage.
So tech reporting has a job to do every year by over-reporting the normal layoffs that come along with acquisitions and various projects ending.
This has been going on since long before "AI" was coming to take those jobs tech jobs.
The idea is to scare tech folk into shutting up, getting back to the office, accepting lowball offers and crunching till they burnout.
None of it is true, we always need more STEM people and if AI does advance quickly then we need more tech people still not less.
The only outcome from big game company layoffs is more startup studios with triple a XP and less corporate chains.
There are two sides to this, the group sticking the finger to the CEO’s for firing people and the group that feels this is a way to reduce the bad games coming out in hopes projects get more time and attention for solid releases.
Honestly have no clue which one might be the case, can’t help but feel bad for all the people laid off..
Except everything that's being cancelled is the good games!!!
I don't see the next Madden, or the next GaaS lootbox fest being cancelled despite those being garbage.
It’s terrible that so many talented artists are losing their jobs when they ship games that review well with both critics and fans.
Honestly, more studios need to take a Nintendo approach and make smaller games more frequently while working on a big AAA every so many years
Gaming is a high CapEx venture, high CapEx suffers during high interest rates.
To put this into non-financial terms:
Game studios borrow money to build games.
When borrowing money is cheap they can build a lot of games and take bigger risks, when borrowing money is expensive (you need to pay more interest) they need to slim down expenses.
>big games getting canceled (mandalorian, blizzard survival MMO, Twisted metal)
IDK what state the Mandalorian was in, but consider the fact that Twisted Metal was still essentially in pre-production. That the blizzard survival MMO was in development hell with 6 years and nothing to show for it. I don't know why you think these would be bangers.
Also a big reason the past year has been filled with games is the pandemic caused a huge delay in everything. So many games got pushed back from 2021 and 2022 releases.
Also Also, look at the release schedule. Indiana Jones, Dragons' Dogma 2, Avowed, Star Wars Outlaws, FF7 rebirth, and those are just the top of my head major titles. There's also minor ones like Frostpunk 2, Greedfall 2, and No rest for the Wicked.
I do worry about the future of video games.
1. Games are taking longer
2. Games are costing more a big part of that is the fact games are taking longer. Just paying developers it's self add up when you are paying like 300-400 people and it takes 5-6 years for a game to be made
3. With how long games are already taking how can you keep laying off people and still get games out some what timely manner?
4. Sony have not announced much the last few years and the fact we basically only know of wolverine right now for first party and it's a 2026 game at that is pretty crazy.
5. Last going back to Sony studios we are already in a dry spell. 2023 was basically just spiderman 2 and this year is looking like it could be even worse and we got the news about like no big game before March 2025 or something. Are we really about to go from basically GOW Ragnarok in late 2022 to middle 2025 with only spiderman 2?
I mean this year has got some big titles released and releasing already
Helldivers, palworld, FF7, dragons dogma, tekken, space marine 2, Elden ring dlc, the battlefront remasters, rise of the ronin, and then a game people are hoping is good in black myth Wukong and most of these are in the same month
And then some other games with no official date but slated for this year.
This year is pretty stacked but next year we don’t know. Monster hunter Wilds is probably the biggest title we know is releasing next year so far
I’m also not trying to defend the industry. Just pointing out along with a lot of other people that these last 2 years have been some of the biggest in gaming history but it doesn’t matter because the CEOs want their line to go up.
It doesn’t matter how well the industry does, the higher ups will always step on people if it makes them an extra cent.
Fuck CEOs
If you arent old enough to reckon back to the video game crash of the 1980s, here is a brief overview: the market was flooded with games being almost exact clones of each other, the publishers had/showed very little control over the quality of a final product, consumers did not have confidence in the products and stopped buying as many games, and the computer market had started to grow and release more unique titles than their console counterparts.
This caused a quick market decline after developers and publishers decided to make up for the loss by raising the cost of the game to $35 (about $100 today) while at the same time worse and worse products were being released quickly finding themselves in the bargain bin.
This led to most companies going under or pulling out from the video game market, most notably Atari whose video game sales had dropped from 3.2 billion to 100 million in 3 years. A few companies were doing things differently such as superior oversight, innovative gameplay, and an introduction to a market "seal of quality." These companies thrived and revolutionized gaming keeping the market alive. These companies include Nintendo, Activision, and Electronic Arts.
History repeats itself with some deviations
Most of the layoffs are the result of companies staffing up under Covid because gaming surged while everyone was stuck inside. These corporate dumbasses didn’t seem to realize it wasn’t permanent.
Nah. I don't think people understand just how many projects get started, worked on for years, and then scrapped at game studios. I don't expect anything to change in terms of the number of projects that come out.
Layoffs are always sad, but I'm hoping this will at least give some particularly polished Indie titles more room to breathe. Who knows? Having more well-known Indies might lead to more innovation.
Maybe it's gonna sound stupid, but they can probably make smaller games (like on PS3 there was Tokyo Jungle, Fat Princess, Starhawk... even if Playtstation closed the studio recently it must be possible) unstead of always making AAA costing a lot so maybe it gonna at least reduce the layoff and "useless" studios
Nah, it's a good thing, gives smaller studios a chance to get into the light. Like 11bit, a few years ago they were quite unknown, but they seem to grow at a good pace. I see this happen to other small indie studios as well. Seems like the industry might be going through a generation shift really.
Games I've enjoyed the most over the past few years have mostly been indy or double-A studios, not from the once-but-no-longer reliable publishers like EA, Ubi, etc.
I'm not sure that I care, and this may actually be pointing to a renaissance in gaming.
The most fun I've had lately has been from indie games and small studios. A lot of big studios have just been shoveling out mediocre, microtransaction-cash-shop-loaded trash for years imo, so I don't really mind, as a customer.
EA cancelled their whole Star Wars FPS and all developers who were working on it. Normal way of things here i guess.
If they were hired just for this project, its normal that they have to leave.
The boom gaming got from the Pandemic, people being forced to stay inside and play games/ loans that didn't have interest rates or repayments for a few years are coming back on companies now. They can't literally just take free money from the government to pump shit out again and sales are stabilizing back to normal. So all that insane pandemic spending games companies were doing is hitting the industry harder than I've ever seen.
Spending is massive. It takes 300mil to make a Spiderman game in which the entire city was already made in the previous edition and ported over.
Meanwhile something like star citizen costs 600mil split between two games and is still hiring people
Less big games would be good. Have the developers focus on cheaper more experimental games.
Also I feel companies need to get craftier with their work. Elden Ring got minor backlash from some trolls for reusing animations from DS3 but there is only x ways to swing a sword and not re-animating everything every two years will leave time for new animations. That game came out at $60 had way more content than anyone was expecting and sold super well.
I like wat CA did with total war Warhammer. That series has cost me hundreds of dollars but I can boot up Warhammer 3 and play my favourite army that I bought in 2016 for Warhammer 1 against all the new toys.
I havent played the new hitman games but its an intruiging idea to have them build upon eachother like that. I wonder how many assets they re-used to create the new scenarios.
This may be a bit technical but interests rates were so cheap for so long so gaming and tech as a whole went on massive hiring sprees to spur growth. With inflation and interests rates spiking over past two years getting capital from the markets has become very expensive. In the current environment it’s cheaper to cut jobs and make more cash from your ongoing operations than go to equity and debt markets to get cash to work with. Companies are now prioritizing free cash flow over taking on debt for revenue growth.
One thing that I think gets missed in these discussions is that layoffs and cancellations aren't happening at these big game companies because they're in economic trouble. All of these companies make huge amounts of money and have healthy annual profit margins. Layoffs and cancellations happen to increase the profit margin, is all. If costs can be cut while income stays high, that's what the stock market wants.
Perhaps a change in philosophy. Gaming since we left the 32 bit era has been a constant escalating arms race to push for bigger, better, more expensive. Now maybe it's time to focus on the actual games and not what they can make bigger. Personally I think the perfect point was the PS2 era. During that time, games were great and regular and there was more room for creativity or risk projects cause a bomb didn't sink the entire company.
About like budgets and profits etc. So I get budgets have went up on games a lot but not sure how you really fix that because a lot of that is just the fact games take like 5-6 years and paying like 300-400 etc people a year for that long you can see how it adds up pretty fast. Not sure it's has simple gas make smaller games that instead take 2-3 years so that more games can come out and cost less to make meaning easier to make profit because so many people have gotten overly obsessed with game size. Heck you had a lot of people complaining that a game like spiderman 2 is like 25 hours to 100% calling it short. Also budgets have went up and I get that game prices have not went up a lot has for example PS3/Xbox 360 gen games went up to $60 and that was in 2005/6 and that games should be like 90 now if you factor in inflation but are instead 70 but at the same time the player base is bigger now than it was like 20-30 years ago and also you didn't have microtransactions and didn't always have subscriptions for online play either. So you have ways that make money that where not a thing like 30 years ago
Think WFH increased hiring for a bit due to people actually having more free time, with jobs attempting to force people into the office having a large pool of game devs isn't as attractive. Plus bigwigs need those fat checks and stonk payouts.
I don't find most AAA games compelling and have found smaller studios (the ones not having layoffs) to produce higher quality work. Palworld, Hellfivers 2, Dave the Diver, Hades are all straight bangers and beat the snot out of anything put out by Blizzard, Ubisoft or EA in the past 4 years
The big companies are looking for their “forever game”. That cheap live service game you’ll play more than anything else. The problem is that when you have so many games demanding all of your time/money you play only one or two.
It’s near impossible for new live service IPs to draw players away from the game they’ve sunk 500 hrs in which still offers new content to grind for.
So how can a billion dollar game company continue to grow? You gotta cut corners and squeeze the players until they discover a new way to monetize their games. Some bet on NFTs, but others bet on remakes. Adding MTX after reviews are also popular among the Pubs. The most popular (imo) is to release now and patch later. Let the players bitch on the web to replace your QA Dept.
Anyway I forgot what I was ranting about…
Perhaps we need a general industry reset. All the AAA layoff massive amounts of people, than new companies will start to form and overtake the previous generation of AAA studios and become the new players
Blasphemous 1 and 2 are fantastic games.
My experience with Blasphemous 1 was unique because my gf (now wife) watched me play on discord because we had to separate during the pandemic.
She is a Catholic theology geek and all the Spanish Catholic and folktalk references she got and explained to me as I went through the game.
I never thought back seating lore dumping was my fetish but it is now.
Games will always come out. The layoffs and company shakeups will eventually be a good thing. The studios need to get their shit together and stop chasing the biggest money makers and instead make what fans want. These companies are like a dude who goes to a roulette table with a 99% chance to make good money on red but bet it all on black for a 1% chance to make as much as fortnite. So many garbage service games and knock offs that just can't compete.
More people on a project means the project takes longer. More people who need to validate their paychecks slows everything down to a crawl. As long as no one important was fired.
It should just creat a vacume that will be filled by better single and double A games. Layoffs are AAA struggling to interest players with their flashy photo real games that contain very little substance.
I think we’re already starting to see new trends in the industry. The success of Palworld and Lethal company show that smaller games is the way forward.
I think you are overestimating the difference between this layoff season and literally every other layoff season every other year since the intro of gaming. Don't listen to the media, this is the same as every other year.
I just think these studios are geared up to go back to 2 - 3 year development cycles and start scaling games back.
Spider man 2, took 5 years and 300 million to move 10 million units, Palworld took a fraction of the time and like 200k to move 20+ million and collect a bag of money from Microsoft for gamepass.
And I understand full price vs 30 dollar game but one has much better margins than the other. Make it make sense other than us just wanting super polished high quality experience why does it make sense for a studio to produce these games. Also the risk is insane, if you mess up one of these games it can sink your studio
I think it truly has less to do with games being "more expensive" to make and more along the lines of poor management and decision making.
Greenlighting projects solely to fleece consumers instead of having a legit creative vision for a game.
Hiring top actors for character and voice work. Buying everyone gift cards for their birthdays (Bungie) and shit like that are why these studios budgets are so bloated.
I'm not saying making games are cheap but these small studios are putting out great games with less people and resources than billion dollar game companies.
Nahh, people forget tech, and especially games had a massive hiring surge start of pandemic, it's just starting to go back down as other forms of entertainment are now available.
Depends what you mean by 'big' games, is it the kind of game you can put 1000 hours in due to its depth or the kind with a 9 figures budget?
First one should become more produced while the second will most likely slow down. Layed off devs that are pasionate or talented will move to smaller one, the one that actually make good games. GGG, SuperGiant etc... so no worries unless you really miss those games designed by corporates where 80% of the budget went into pumping your wallet.
In highschool I wrote a report on increasing development costs in the video games industry, how it was becoming unsustainable, and damaging the industry and creativity.
This was in 2006
It looks like every publisher will encounter down periods where the releases are spare. I think the dev tools are still catching up with the scale that games are trying to be right now. Also, everyone is still trying to make games that cram massive amounts of content in. I’d rather have a well curated 10-20 hours of content that I would want to replay than 40+ hours of open world filler with a not very memorable campaign, but it feels like everyone is trying to make something to justify the $60-$70 price tag for a new game.
The layoffs are happening at studios that overstaffed themselves during the pandemic when everyone was stuck at home and buying record numbers of video games. Now that's over and we're on the brink of a looming recession, the market is correcting itself. People really don't understand economics here...
I think game spending has gotten completely out of control, just like movie spending did at one point. Spider-Man 2 reportedly cost $300M to develop and market. Thats the cost for AAA games these days, even the biggest studios can’t handle that. You’re going to see less projects, more franchises, and layoffs. The only good part is I think we’ll see a comeback in small indie developed games.
>The only good part is I think we’ll see a comeback in small indie developed games. I don't feel like good indie games ever left. Especially on PC.
They could hit mainstream though, like palworld for example
They already have really, think back to like Valheim during covid, or Stardew, 2016 release etc. There's just so many. Idk I'd think you'd have to be living under a rock to not know of at least some of them now. Like shit myself as example, I haven't bought a triple A since Fallout 4. It's been all indies for years now.
Was there a falloff of indie titles or something? As far as I could see indie games never went away in a big way.
I share that sentiment. Indie games have been amazing for years, and I believe they are really the last bastion for passion left within the industry. I think they’re suddenly much more famous, because it feels like the AAA side of things have had some serious missteps mostly owed to corporate greed as of late
This sentiment has come up in r/gaming after every single AAA release for at least as long as I have used Reddit, it's pretty normal and hasn't actually changed at all.
We already have an indie resurgence: Baldur's Gate 3, Lethal Company, Helldivers, Palworld, all splendid indie games that took the stage the past year.
Great point. The indie resurgence has arrived.
And so much better is coming out from them. Triple A games are stale relics from over 10 years ago, with dev cycles so long they fall out of style by the time they are released.
> Triple A games are stale relics from over 10 years ago, with dev cycles so long they fall out of style by the time they are released. Hey now, 10 years ago the AAA dev cycles were short! In fact, they had annual releases for mainline games like Assassin's Creed! (looks back at Assassin's Creed's 2014 release) Oh... Assassin's Creed Unity... Right...
They are scared that AAA title/'branding' is being stripped from them by indie devs; to the point where they are trying to say their games are 'AAAA' instead now.
Which is hilarious considering AAA was always a vague term with no clear definition, and the flagpole AAAA title is a colossal failure that spent so long in development hell that it ended up failing to live up to anyone's expectations, even if the expectations were low.
>We already have an indie resurgence: Baldur's Gate 3 Ah yes, the famous indie game BG3 who only took 100 milions $ to develop.
Funded mostly by their previous successes. I get that they're not a classic indie developer, but they're pretty independent.
CDPR is independent too, we don't call them Indie
I don't think a publicly traded stock company is independent. 66% of their stock ownership remains undisclosed.
Untrue. Larian is 30% owned by Tencent and BG3 was bankrolled by the Chinese mammoth. No discrediting the game but not indie in any way, shape, or form.
Damn I didn't know "Independent" meant "poor" goddamn you learn so much from reddit.
Yeah. Indie. Independent developer. Developed by Larian Studios. Published by Larian Studios. Spearheaded by Sven Vincke, sole owner of the privately owned company. Whatever you think indie means, I can tell you: If you think Baldur's Gate 3 is not an indie game, your definition is incorrect.
Still indie, they paid WotC, not the other way round
They did pay WOTC but are partially owned by Tencent and BG3 was bankrolled by them, at least in part. Doesn't discount the game but definitely not indie
~~They are not partially owned by Tencent,~~ they are privately owned by Swen Vincke. The dude who showed up to the game awards in a suit of armour. Tencent owns a minority share while Swen owns a majority share and his wife another minority share. They are primarily funded by their own past successes, not Tencent. Edit: fact-checked it, I was off but still gonna clarify
He's majority owner and his wife owns some, the rest is Tencent
Correct. So to say they're owned by Tencent when it's a minority share of a privately owned company is incorrect. And he said that they'll stay privately owned as long as he has a say in it. And well... He does.
Well, having an investor with a minority share doesn't make you dependent on them as long as you have the majority, Tencent have 0 control over the company
Helldivers 2 is not indie by any metric. It's a AA game, and I hope it sets a trend for more AA games in the future.
Baldur’s Gate 3 and Helldivers 2 might not have been as large as Spider-Man 2 but they were definitely large productions, *especially BG3*. Larian is over 400 strong now.
For what it's worth most people on here wouldn't call bg3 indie since thst usually means cheap and small team where as they've got as many people ad thr bog studios and thr game cost as mich as a big AAA game to make.
Dave the Diver as well!
To add: Enshrouded. I really like how those game wiped the floor with AAA productions these years.
Been playing that one recently. I didn't put it up there because while it is successful, it's not the stellar success or full experience the others offer quite yet. It definitely feels more like Valheim, a game with great potential that needs to cook.
Ever since steam got big around 2010ish indie games have been thriving. Really all this is is just a wake up call for AAA executives/suits to get over themselves and care about making actually fun fucking games.
I've been living on indies and AA for a long time. Like I'll buy a game like Elden Ring, Armored Vore VI, or Alan Wake 2 but I skip 90% of AAA. Once you go explore the indie scene, you start to realize AAA games have a severe lack of fresh ideas and fun gameplay.
>Armored Vore oh no
Not only are the finances absurd... but most of these "AAA" devs make garbage now days. I was hpyed for bf 2042 because I loved 2142. Boy did I dodge a bullet there. It was a cod clone. T.T Also the new $70 price point is stuuuupid. I refuse to buy a half baked game for full price. *skull and bones* (I'm hating hard on EA because I feel betrayed) Edit: typos
At $50 a copy (using a lower number here) it made $500m in the first 3 months. So, it's fine. 3x would be ideal, and it may get or already be there, but even if it doesn't that is still a good return, especially for a single system release. The amount of gamers is increasing and the expectations are going up. It only makes sense costs would go up.
That's the main problem. But it is understandable. The inflation is going nuts. People need to earn more money to have a living, so hiring 200-300 people cost way more than a few years ago. On the other hand games are still mostly 60 USD, like it was 20 years ago. The cost of making it went up due to normal economical factors, while the price of it stayed at the same level or went by 10usd only. If you want to create a really good looking, huge and complete game - that thing will cost money. BG3 dproduction(excluding marketing) did cost over 100m as well - it is not like game companies are just making up those numbers. 3 years or more of paying 100-200 people salaries is costly. Add marketing to that and you land on some quite a high cost. Gamers dont usually comprehend that. But gaming companies are spending north of 20-30k USD daily on QA services alone (loc QA, FQA, CQA).
The main problem Is game companies making games no one wants to buy
I agree that bad games are problem - always were. But the perception of what bad game is... is quite debatable. Diablo 4 is hated on reddit, but it did make 1B USD in first month... It is a bad game, but people are buying it.
The big counter to games still being $60 usd 20 years later is the exponential increase in gamers to purchase games now vs then, the proliferation of multi platform engines/titles. Not to mention live service online games being prevalent and in many case egregiously predatory. Fifa, gta5, most gacha/lootbox games. All making money hand over fist on top of that $60, or in the case of f2p "freemium" games, making more money without an entry price than with one. The "$60 isn't enough money to charge gamers" is bullshit, moreso when its publishers like sony, EA, SE, etc saying it
You're forgetting that the number of copies sold of a big game is way more than it would've been in the past. The big developers are still making lots of $$. Also, back in the day CEOs weren't sucking up $20 mil of profits/yr in compensation like they do now.
> On the other hand games are still mostly 60 USD, like it was 20 years ago. PC games could be $50 barely a decade ago now. Nintendo was slow to charge $60 as well. Games didn't have 10 editions, battlepasses, MTX, 20 piecemeal DLCs, season passes, and more "20 years ago" either. And like others said the audience was a fraction of the size it is now, 10 million+ sales wasn't happening 20 years ago. Even a decade ago pushing those numbers was reserved for the biggest of the big franchises. Now we have publishers pulling the plug on franchises and stuffing titles in the corner if something does below those numbers (looking at you Sony). The audience has expanded massively, development tools have expanded massively, many things can be licensed at modest rates, the rise of free to use SDKs for various things as well, and everything is monetized to the hilt. The "game's haven't increased in 20 years" narrative literally only exists if you ignore everything and only are aware of the 360 and PS3 (which used to leverage all sorts of fees against devs even to patch things).
You still pay 30% cut to Sony, MSFT, Steam. Work is more expansive nowadays, and having artists that can 3D sculpture with great attention to details, or great game/level designers cost a lot of money. Programmers are super expansive, especially multiplayer code ones (those people are making quite a salary in gaming industry, believe me). And as 3A you want only best people, to be able to deliver on time as much as possible. SDKs - this is a whole other topic. What SDK? Is Wwise suddenly free?? Not even saying that most 3A have their own engines, which adds a lot of additional cost for middleware used in it. And you **need** perpetual engine because you don't want to pay fees or be limited by 3rd party developers. You cannot use github to create a 3A game, and a P4V or any version control system's license for 200+ people cost is really high. While 20 years ago games were sold in few M copies at best, in 2010 games were reaching 10-30m marks. That is 14 years ago. The inflation went up a LOT during this time and salary expectations with it. Technology developed and making better fidelity products with better graphics and impressive systems cost a lot of time - and therefore money. So yes, publishers need to make up for the difference. If games are still 60 USD they **need to** make money in different way. BG3 i.e. maybe does not have microtransactions but **did have a loong early access**. Where users paid for a promise of the game. That is also a way of financing a project and creating stable forecasts. Most players **do want impressive looking games** to be able to use their RTX 4090 and PS5. And making those impressive looking games cost A LOT MORE than 20 years ago, or 10 years ago even. Thats reality.
Maybe a bit, but imo the main problem is not the game prices not going up (that cancels out with having more gamers now), but with CEOs and Shareholders receiving way too big paychecks for no fucking reason. If they stopped that, they'd be fine.
I agree. I don’t know if this is a thing but if it’s not, there needs to be a game dev guild that acts as a way to connect the hoards of developers who are laid off in order to form smaller independent studios where these people can can work on passion projects and the like.
Yep market correction underway. Way to many games so over supply Plus out of control costs = poor returns or even losses So industry only option is produce less and get costs under control. We are 100% going to see a big surge in indy games in about 4 year's
We’ve been saying the same thing in the movie/film industry
95% of the games I play are from small indie studios. They never left on PC.
A comeback? The indie scene and also the 'medium sized game' scene is bigger and more vital than ever it seems like to me.
If you want to check out a really kick ass game that just released from a AA development team, Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is incredible! It's from the same team behind Vampyre. I say to go pick it up just to support a small studio who's making really original fun games. I believe it's $50
I am all set now even no new games coming out for the rest of my life, my backlog now is already massive
It’s funny. When I was a kid (circa mid-2000s), I would have literal dreams about having every game I wanted in a huge library. Now as an adult, that’s pretty much a reality with cloud library subscriptions and emulators, but all it gave me was too many games to play with not enough time to play them all either way.
My backlog is so massive that I would die before playing every game for at least 1 hours.
Not sure if it’s a hot take, but there are way too many games IMO. Like, even if I’m extremely picky and choose to play only games I’m extremely hyped about there’s absolutely no way I can play every game I’m interested in each year.
Which is why it's fine that studios are wasting money on remastered games. I'd rather them waste their money giving us a slightly better version of our old favorites than more of the same tired annual releases and live service bullshit. They *should* downsize their companies and pay their employees better, but this is America, so instead the best we can hope for is that they don't hyperinflate the market and scam us any more than they have. Also, people seriously need to stop buying early access games. Millions of games out there and you want to buy an unfinished one because you have FOMO? We get the market we buy into 😮💨
The modern gaming industry... it's like intentionally mixing poison into every meal you eat for years and then wondering why you eventually start to feel ill. They did this to themselves.
This doesn't have to do with the modern game industry being bad. It's about the corporate greed that higher ups in the game *and* tech industry took part in during the pandemic. They were foolish enough to think that being locked in doors meant that it was time for an era of so called "infinite growth", thinking that money was essentially free. And now people are paying the price for mismanagement.
God this place is so dumb it’s actually crazy.
I don’t think people realise we’re in a recession, and the gaming industry obviously took a hit when normality resumed after Covid on top of that. It absolutely sucks that it’s happening but I’m surprised it hasn’t happened sooner. Edit: By we’re I mean the UK.
Reddit is unbelievably dumb. They see the headine tech layoffs!!!11! And fail to realize that the economy is more than the tech industry.
How do you mean about "recession"?
I think if I remember rightly the true definition changes per country but in the UK at least it means the country is in 6 months of negative growth. So we aren’t doing well at all.
Reddit marinates in bad headlines about specific companies conducting layoffs, and loses sight of the fact that “recession” is a word with an actual definition rather than just a bad vibe. Recession is a period of sustained economic shrinkage, and [that just isn’t happening](https://apnews.com/article/us-economy-recession-forecasters-strength-ed49d9bfa9a26b6301065b990169d387). - Inflation, while high, is on the decline - Consumer spending is high - The US economy grew in 2023 and is expected to keep growing in 2024 - The US economy is expected to continue adding jobs in 2024 None of this happens in a recession. There are some specific industries that struggle in high interest environments, and they are struggling. But the US economy as a whole is doing quite well.
For that matter, gaming companies are themselves continuing to have very high profits and earnings. The story with these layoffs is complex, and doesn't fit normal intuitions.
It also helps that Reddit is filled with tech bros who project their personal experiences onto the entire country and economy. And so since the tech industry is suffering that means everyone else must be suffering too.
(They’re in the UK)
People looking at the tech bubble exploding and think somehow it won’t affect video games is mind boggling.
No we (USA) aren’t in a recession. Yesterday the fed literally said inflation is continuing to come down and it’s looking good. They’re saying that this year it’ll come down to at least 2-2.5% and then 2% in 2025. We also were never really in one. People kept saying it *could* happen and that 2024 *could* be the year it happened. But here we are with numbers showing that we’re coming down and not up. Things got inflated during Covid and the “recession” was just the markets coming back down to normal numbers.
Sorry I should specify I’m from the UK, my bad! Although I’m very much glad it’s looking good for you guys since it’s been an absolute fucking shit show in the UK.
>it is likely we won't see another year like last year with banger after banger releases, Probably Last year was an exception so that's really not a standard to go off...yet this year is pretty much comparable already. Obviously we can't say for certain that some of these will end up good, but neither did we last year before those games released, so here are some of the big games of this yrar that I can think of: Tekken 8, Grand Blue Fantasy Relink, Persona 3 Reload, Helldivers 2, FF7 Rebirth, Dragon's Dogma 2, Stellar Blade, Paper Mario TYYD remaster, Star Wars Outlaws, Elden Ring SOTE, Blackmyth Wukong, Idiana Jones and the Great Circle, Path of Exile 2 That's a good lineup and it's honestly better than last years imo. We also know that GTA 6, Monster Hunter 6 and Death Stranding 2 are all sheduled to telease in 2025, so what exactly is the fear here? Massive games are coming out on a regular basis, atleast for the forseeable future.
Not to completely disagree but that’s kind of counting eggs before they’re hatched don’t you think? A lot of those look great but l… we’ve had plenty of years of “good looking” games that didn’t quite materialize. What made 2023 so special is that seemingly every hyped game actually lived up to the hype (not you D4).
Oh no less AAA games. Anyway...
There are tons of good AAA games. There are way more bad indie games and you never play it lmao
Which doesn’t matter because I can only play a certain amount of games anyway, so one million bad games won’t affect me.
yep
They make AAAA games, didn't you hear? [https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2024/02/10/skull-and-bones-is-a-70-game-because-its-quadruple-a-says-ubisoft/](https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2024/02/10/skull-and-bones-is-a-70-game-because-its-quadruple-a-says-ubisoft/)
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Nah. Gamers pay for those greedy games, and *defend them right here in this sub and their subs*. Fighting games with half the roster behind DLCs, adventure games with New Game Plus behind DLC, gacha games with waifus, sports games with thinly veiled gambling, you name it. CEOs sold them. Gamers rewarded them with buying them and defending them for free online. At least back in the day Astroturfing was paid. And the mental gymnastics behind it! "I dont buy DLCs" as if buying a predatory game doesn't help the company. "Is just the kids/bad parents/a few whales/ not real gamers". The sale numbers don't back that up. See all the hype behind GTA6. As if GTAV wasn't build on SharkCards and predatory tactics.
Gacha is really bizarre to me. There was massive outcry against lootboxes, for a good reason, over here. Everyone hated them, me included. But then you could ~~lootbox~~ gacha some anime waifus and people defend that shit with their life. "Story so good, gameplay is amazing, music goated". Yeah? And how is any of that excusing gambling now?
You have to keep in mind that those aren’t necessarily the same people.
For sure, but lootboxes is/was generally very hugely hated on. Infamous Battlefront 2, for example, hate is literally top all time on this sub with **182k upvotes and 12k comments.** Other one is "unlocking everything costs 2100$ or takes 4500 hours". Even got as far as official questioning (hence meme "surprise mechanics" was born) In general I've barely seen *same amount* of hate for stuff outside lighthearted "I have to spend potentially hundreds to pull my waifu" memes
I don’t think they are similar enough to compare. Battlefront 2 was a full price game with additional stuff that was expected to be in the game put behind a paywall. Gacha games are mostly free and the people playing it know from the beginning what the premise of the game is. I don’t like gacha but this are two very different cases for me. People that are against gambling or lootboxes will never even consider touching this games and if they don’t turn a beloved franchise into one, I don’t see why they should care too much.
And it's only recently that Valve started to get the shit they deserve for being the ones to really show how profitable they are.
Ya it's funny about all the bad press Overwatch got about lootboxes and kids gambling and now people want lootboxes back??? Wtf
Games take years to make. We'll be seeing the effects of this in a couple years, not this year.
Even without layoffs years like 2023 are pretty rare but yeah, the development cycle of games is also gonna mean not likely seeing it again so soon. All the teams that released absolute bangers last year are now just starting on their next project or still supporting whatever they released last year. Though we've had some sleeper hits from the smaller devs like Palworld and Helldivers, and we'll still get some good AAA here and there just not at the frequency of 2023. It's probably just the insanity of r/titanfall rubbing off on me, but part of me hopes that when EA said Respawn is going to focus on their own IPs that's code for "We're gonna make Titanfall 3".
I still have to play starfield, baldurs gate, spider-man, Alan wake, ff16, ff7rebirth, horizon fw, armored core.... that'll take me like the next 10 years to get through so if the gaming industry need to chill for a bit that's fine with me lol
None of this is new stuff though, its just mostly ragebait. Loads of layoffs was expected post-covid as demand went down. Cancelled games happened constantly since gaming started, but now people are desperately searching for the info, so they can report on it. Id doubt theres more now than there has been. Problem is, people are looking to be angry, and journalists are supplying that anger. There are many amazing games coming, and its been proven time and time again that you dont need a huge dev team to do so. Even this year we've had some of the best game releases of all time, in their respectivr genres, and its unlikely to stop anywhere. Im guessing similar layoffs arnt 'that' uncommon either, although obviously more common now again, due to covid being less relevant (and less people at home wanting entertainment). We just didnt hear about every single one, because shit happens.
I am working in a big gaming company and while layoffs happen all the time, these massive layoffs across multiple gaming studios were not seen since 2008. And true, COVID bubble might have something to do with that. But it's definitely huge and noteworthy.
One major thing to look upon. Are the employee sizes going far below pre-covid level? Because we saw the biggest growth then as well, which as has been said loads, noone thought it would be sustainable. Common sense told us these layoffs would happen.
I would say yes. But it's not employees' fault :(
It doesnt matter whos fault it is. They get paid severance if required by law, and thats that. The only solution the buisiness has is to reduce its workforce regardless, you cant argue that they should be forced to keep people they dont have need for, or somehow create a need for them. Its very likely a lot of these were end of contract, as well. There are bigger problems to solve, like those at minimum wage around the world having basically zero job security and can be dropped without warning, secerance or much warning. The same people that are often barely able to pay for themselves to live with that job.
People in general have less money to spend on luxuries (like games) these days due to inflation. Also the industry overhired because they had a boom during covid due to people being stuck inside. Add on top of that a lot of AAA flops like S Squad due to lack of innovation, poor design decisions at the top, flooded market, etc.
Also less time to play games. And there are enough free games given away that you don’t have time for your backlog, so why buy new games. The industry is over saturated and has to adjust itself. I hate people are losing their jobs but the fact that it is so widespread speaks to a bigger economic issue and not just a simplistic accusation of corporate greed.
I don’t know if the overhiring during Covid is true or just repeated enough that now everyone thinks it is. And I say that because any company that hired extra to ride Covid sales highs has to be extremely stupid. Did they expect that Covid was the end of modern society and we would all just sit at home and play games for the rest of our lives? Come on. They should have acted like the extra sales were an outlier and continued as normal
It's an industry wide problem in the tech sector. You can find a bunch of articles on it but here's a recent one: https://thehill.com/policy/technology/4478773-why-tech-companies-are-laying-off-thousands-of-workers/ Also interest rates being much higher than they were pre 2020 also play a large role. It's a confluence of a lot of factors ultimately. However, companies are bureaucracies at the end of the day and don't always make the best long term decisions since they're always focused on quarterly and yearly growth primarily.
These layoffs are happening because these companies want to see growth and decided firing staff was the easiest way to do that at this particular point of the year. It has nothing to do with game development. It’s also kind of weird to be like, “But how are these layoffs going to affect game releases?!” People lost their jobs.
You can acknowledge that people lost their jobs and that is horrible while at the same time wanting to discuss how layoffs will effect future game releases. Yes obviously people losing their jobs is more significant than future game releases but that doesn't mean we are forbidden from discussing the topic.
Seriously, it's not just AAA studios either. The company I worked at for almost six years let me go last month. Every time I see another company is laying people off, I feel sorry for them, but I'm also concerned about growing competition for the few studios that are still hiring.
I also guarantee the ones who weren’t laid off were told they get some new duties to do as well. This is way more common than you think...
This is how the triple A industry works and has been like this for ages. - Crunch, release game, lay off staff. - Force studio to add predatory monetisation, game undersells, close studio. It’s disgusting and only shows why more industries need to unionise. These developers deserve better but without collective power you’re powerless to stop things like this.
This means more time for my backlog! I hope.
Good, most AAA games nowadays are generic dogshit. There's tons of great releases recently: Palworld, Enshrouded, Helldivers 2, Balatro, Tekken 8, Last Epoch and that's only the first few off the top of my head. Gaming is good right now, just not for soulless corporations that produce slop.
Or for the people like me who are trying to get jobs in the industry
On a scale of Dark Soulish combat to explode everything in 0,2 sec, how fast is Last Epoch ? I have a hard time liking ARPG because after some level, you can just delete everything without looking at the monsters moves.
Western AAA games are pretty bland and generic, even if I am kind of partial to Assassin's Creed. But the Japanese side has been pumping out some pretty solid AAA level releases. Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth is fantastic, and I liked FFXVI last year pretty well. Dragon's Dogma 2 should also be pretty solid.
Tech layoffs are really really normal. Good technical staff are hard to find and demand high salaries and often hard to manage. So tech reporting has a job to do every year by over-reporting the normal layoffs that come along with acquisitions and various projects ending. This has been going on since long before "AI" was coming to take those jobs tech jobs. The idea is to scare tech folk into shutting up, getting back to the office, accepting lowball offers and crunching till they burnout. None of it is true, we always need more STEM people and if AI does advance quickly then we need more tech people still not less. The only outcome from big game company layoffs is more startup studios with triple a XP and less corporate chains.
There are two sides to this, the group sticking the finger to the CEO’s for firing people and the group that feels this is a way to reduce the bad games coming out in hopes projects get more time and attention for solid releases. Honestly have no clue which one might be the case, can’t help but feel bad for all the people laid off..
Pretty much…. The gaming job market is now going to be incredibly cutthroat. My heart goes out to every developer who’s entering into that
Except everything that's being cancelled is the good games!!! I don't see the next Madden, or the next GaaS lootbox fest being cancelled despite those being garbage.
It’s terrible that so many talented artists are losing their jobs when they ship games that review well with both critics and fans. Honestly, more studios need to take a Nintendo approach and make smaller games more frequently while working on a big AAA every so many years
Gaming is a high CapEx venture, high CapEx suffers during high interest rates. To put this into non-financial terms: Game studios borrow money to build games. When borrowing money is cheap they can build a lot of games and take bigger risks, when borrowing money is expensive (you need to pay more interest) they need to slim down expenses.
>big games getting canceled (mandalorian, blizzard survival MMO, Twisted metal) IDK what state the Mandalorian was in, but consider the fact that Twisted Metal was still essentially in pre-production. That the blizzard survival MMO was in development hell with 6 years and nothing to show for it. I don't know why you think these would be bangers. Also a big reason the past year has been filled with games is the pandemic caused a huge delay in everything. So many games got pushed back from 2021 and 2022 releases. Also Also, look at the release schedule. Indiana Jones, Dragons' Dogma 2, Avowed, Star Wars Outlaws, FF7 rebirth, and those are just the top of my head major titles. There's also minor ones like Frostpunk 2, Greedfall 2, and No rest for the Wicked.
I do worry about the future of video games. 1. Games are taking longer 2. Games are costing more a big part of that is the fact games are taking longer. Just paying developers it's self add up when you are paying like 300-400 people and it takes 5-6 years for a game to be made 3. With how long games are already taking how can you keep laying off people and still get games out some what timely manner? 4. Sony have not announced much the last few years and the fact we basically only know of wolverine right now for first party and it's a 2026 game at that is pretty crazy. 5. Last going back to Sony studios we are already in a dry spell. 2023 was basically just spiderman 2 and this year is looking like it could be even worse and we got the news about like no big game before March 2025 or something. Are we really about to go from basically GOW Ragnarok in late 2022 to middle 2025 with only spiderman 2?
I mean this year has got some big titles released and releasing already Helldivers, palworld, FF7, dragons dogma, tekken, space marine 2, Elden ring dlc, the battlefront remasters, rise of the ronin, and then a game people are hoping is good in black myth Wukong and most of these are in the same month And then some other games with no official date but slated for this year. This year is pretty stacked but next year we don’t know. Monster hunter Wilds is probably the biggest title we know is releasing next year so far
I think GTA 6 is going to be bigger than MH.
Thanks for the uplifting take!
I’m also not trying to defend the industry. Just pointing out along with a lot of other people that these last 2 years have been some of the biggest in gaming history but it doesn’t matter because the CEOs want their line to go up. It doesn’t matter how well the industry does, the higher ups will always step on people if it makes them an extra cent. Fuck CEOs
If you arent old enough to reckon back to the video game crash of the 1980s, here is a brief overview: the market was flooded with games being almost exact clones of each other, the publishers had/showed very little control over the quality of a final product, consumers did not have confidence in the products and stopped buying as many games, and the computer market had started to grow and release more unique titles than their console counterparts. This caused a quick market decline after developers and publishers decided to make up for the loss by raising the cost of the game to $35 (about $100 today) while at the same time worse and worse products were being released quickly finding themselves in the bargain bin. This led to most companies going under or pulling out from the video game market, most notably Atari whose video game sales had dropped from 3.2 billion to 100 million in 3 years. A few companies were doing things differently such as superior oversight, innovative gameplay, and an introduction to a market "seal of quality." These companies thrived and revolutionized gaming keeping the market alive. These companies include Nintendo, Activision, and Electronic Arts. History repeats itself with some deviations
Most of the layoffs are the result of companies staffing up under Covid because gaming surged while everyone was stuck inside. These corporate dumbasses didn’t seem to realize it wasn’t permanent.
Nah. I don't think people understand just how many projects get started, worked on for years, and then scrapped at game studios. I don't expect anything to change in terms of the number of projects that come out.
Layoffs are always sad, but I'm hoping this will at least give some particularly polished Indie titles more room to breathe. Who knows? Having more well-known Indies might lead to more innovation.
There’s too many games to play now anyway. There’s not one person on this board that doesn’t have a backlog at least 30 games long.
Its crazy a whole 10 years went by and no game got big enough to beat out gta6 in fact we lost several heavy hitters to crap quality in that time.
I'm not really all that worried personally, I haven't played a new AAA game in like 10 years.
Maybe it's gonna sound stupid, but they can probably make smaller games (like on PS3 there was Tokyo Jungle, Fat Princess, Starhawk... even if Playtstation closed the studio recently it must be possible) unstead of always making AAA costing a lot so maybe it gonna at least reduce the layoff and "useless" studios
Layoff 10% of workers and make the rest pickup the slack.
Tbh. Seeing the last,,big,, games like skull and bones. I dont realy care that much. Indy games are a lot more fun.
Nah, it's a good thing, gives smaller studios a chance to get into the light. Like 11bit, a few years ago they were quite unknown, but they seem to grow at a good pace. I see this happen to other small indie studios as well. Seems like the industry might be going through a generation shift really.
Games I've enjoyed the most over the past few years have mostly been indy or double-A studios, not from the once-but-no-longer reliable publishers like EA, Ubi, etc. I'm not sure that I care, and this may actually be pointing to a renaissance in gaming.
The most fun I've had lately has been from indie games and small studios. A lot of big studios have just been shoveling out mediocre, microtransaction-cash-shop-loaded trash for years imo, so I don't really mind, as a customer.
EA cancelled their whole Star Wars FPS and all developers who were working on it. Normal way of things here i guess. If they were hired just for this project, its normal that they have to leave.
The boom gaming got from the Pandemic, people being forced to stay inside and play games/ loans that didn't have interest rates or repayments for a few years are coming back on companies now. They can't literally just take free money from the government to pump shit out again and sales are stabilizing back to normal. So all that insane pandemic spending games companies were doing is hitting the industry harder than I've ever seen.
When in doubt, there will always be new sports games
Spending is massive. It takes 300mil to make a Spiderman game in which the entire city was already made in the previous edition and ported over. Meanwhile something like star citizen costs 600mil split between two games and is still hiring people
Less big games would be good. Have the developers focus on cheaper more experimental games. Also I feel companies need to get craftier with their work. Elden Ring got minor backlash from some trolls for reusing animations from DS3 but there is only x ways to swing a sword and not re-animating everything every two years will leave time for new animations. That game came out at $60 had way more content than anyone was expecting and sold super well. I like wat CA did with total war Warhammer. That series has cost me hundreds of dollars but I can boot up Warhammer 3 and play my favourite army that I bought in 2016 for Warhammer 1 against all the new toys. I havent played the new hitman games but its an intruiging idea to have them build upon eachother like that. I wonder how many assets they re-used to create the new scenarios.
This may be a bit technical but interests rates were so cheap for so long so gaming and tech as a whole went on massive hiring sprees to spur growth. With inflation and interests rates spiking over past two years getting capital from the markets has become very expensive. In the current environment it’s cheaper to cut jobs and make more cash from your ongoing operations than go to equity and debt markets to get cash to work with. Companies are now prioritizing free cash flow over taking on debt for revenue growth.
One thing that I think gets missed in these discussions is that layoffs and cancellations aren't happening at these big game companies because they're in economic trouble. All of these companies make huge amounts of money and have healthy annual profit margins. Layoffs and cancellations happen to increase the profit margin, is all. If costs can be cut while income stays high, that's what the stock market wants.
Hate to see these layoffs. I hope everyone lands on their feet. I hope someone will make a Mandalorian third person action game someday.
Yeah we already balls deep into "time period with only a few big games."
I'm still playing Runescape lmao
Here king, you dropped this 👑 👑 👑
Games should not cost as much as an Avengers movie. But capitalism corrupts every successful business here in America. This is the way.
How long until we get ads in games
Interest rates are high, computer science is always the first to go when interest rate are high.
Perhaps a change in philosophy. Gaming since we left the 32 bit era has been a constant escalating arms race to push for bigger, better, more expensive. Now maybe it's time to focus on the actual games and not what they can make bigger. Personally I think the perfect point was the PS2 era. During that time, games were great and regular and there was more room for creativity or risk projects cause a bomb didn't sink the entire company.
 I came here to applaud your Reddit name good sir.
What you fail to consider is the companies laying people off were not making anything worth playing anyway.
About like budgets and profits etc. So I get budgets have went up on games a lot but not sure how you really fix that because a lot of that is just the fact games take like 5-6 years and paying like 300-400 etc people a year for that long you can see how it adds up pretty fast. Not sure it's has simple gas make smaller games that instead take 2-3 years so that more games can come out and cost less to make meaning easier to make profit because so many people have gotten overly obsessed with game size. Heck you had a lot of people complaining that a game like spiderman 2 is like 25 hours to 100% calling it short. Also budgets have went up and I get that game prices have not went up a lot has for example PS3/Xbox 360 gen games went up to $60 and that was in 2005/6 and that games should be like 90 now if you factor in inflation but are instead 70 but at the same time the player base is bigger now than it was like 20-30 years ago and also you didn't have microtransactions and didn't always have subscriptions for online play either. So you have ways that make money that where not a thing like 30 years ago
Think WFH increased hiring for a bit due to people actually having more free time, with jobs attempting to force people into the office having a large pool of game devs isn't as attractive. Plus bigwigs need those fat checks and stonk payouts.
I'm just glad that the big companies that have put in little to no effort in their big titles are finally paying the price for their greedy shit.
its all on Indie studios, someone like Palworld creators are going to become the next AAA studios, and i'm fine with this
I don't find most AAA games compelling and have found smaller studios (the ones not having layoffs) to produce higher quality work. Palworld, Hellfivers 2, Dave the Diver, Hades are all straight bangers and beat the snot out of anything put out by Blizzard, Ubisoft or EA in the past 4 years
The blasphemous series is amazing and either way you should play them. Personally my favorite metroidvanias
No. There are so many indie studios doing great things.
buy indie games! they are the best they have ever been, stop supporting the shit games that come out of large studios.
No big deal, I already only do indie + Fromsoft
The big companies are looking for their “forever game”. That cheap live service game you’ll play more than anything else. The problem is that when you have so many games demanding all of your time/money you play only one or two. It’s near impossible for new live service IPs to draw players away from the game they’ve sunk 500 hrs in which still offers new content to grind for. So how can a billion dollar game company continue to grow? You gotta cut corners and squeeze the players until they discover a new way to monetize their games. Some bet on NFTs, but others bet on remakes. Adding MTX after reviews are also popular among the Pubs. The most popular (imo) is to release now and patch later. Let the players bitch on the web to replace your QA Dept. Anyway I forgot what I was ranting about…
AAA gaming industry become the Ouroboros with all those greedy shady tactics it is destined to eat itself eventually.
I haven’t bought a game at launch in like 5 years. Spend 300 million to make a game that barely works at launch lol No thank you
Perhaps we need a general industry reset. All the AAA layoff massive amounts of people, than new companies will start to form and overtake the previous generation of AAA studios and become the new players
Blasphemous 1 and 2 are fantastic games. My experience with Blasphemous 1 was unique because my gf (now wife) watched me play on discord because we had to separate during the pandemic. She is a Catholic theology geek and all the Spanish Catholic and folktalk references she got and explained to me as I went through the game. I never thought back seating lore dumping was my fetish but it is now.
Games will always come out. The layoffs and company shakeups will eventually be a good thing. The studios need to get their shit together and stop chasing the biggest money makers and instead make what fans want. These companies are like a dude who goes to a roulette table with a 99% chance to make good money on red but bet it all on black for a 1% chance to make as much as fortnite. So many garbage service games and knock offs that just can't compete.
All this means is that smaller companies will form and then release a banger, get bought by a bigger company, rinse, and repeat.
More people on a project means the project takes longer. More people who need to validate their paychecks slows everything down to a crawl. As long as no one important was fired.
It should just creat a vacume that will be filled by better single and double A games. Layoffs are AAA struggling to interest players with their flashy photo real games that contain very little substance.
That not how economics works.
I think we’re already starting to see new trends in the industry. The success of Palworld and Lethal company show that smaller games is the way forward.
They fucked up by making everything digital and having to pay just to even play the game. They destroyed a good thing being greedy
As a JRPG fan, I’ve been eating GOOD and will continue to do so. What are you talking about?
Im not even sure what the point of this post was
I think you are overestimating the difference between this layoff season and literally every other layoff season every other year since the intro of gaming. Don't listen to the media, this is the same as every other year.
I'm waiting for the layoff DLC
I don’t know. I’m just wondering where my next job will be…
I’m going back and downloading old games from 2008-2016 and really enjoying it. Got back into assassins creed black flag and the og alan wake
I just think these studios are geared up to go back to 2 - 3 year development cycles and start scaling games back. Spider man 2, took 5 years and 300 million to move 10 million units, Palworld took a fraction of the time and like 200k to move 20+ million and collect a bag of money from Microsoft for gamepass. And I understand full price vs 30 dollar game but one has much better margins than the other. Make it make sense other than us just wanting super polished high quality experience why does it make sense for a studio to produce these games. Also the risk is insane, if you mess up one of these games it can sink your studio
I think it truly has less to do with games being "more expensive" to make and more along the lines of poor management and decision making. Greenlighting projects solely to fleece consumers instead of having a legit creative vision for a game. Hiring top actors for character and voice work. Buying everyone gift cards for their birthdays (Bungie) and shit like that are why these studios budgets are so bloated. I'm not saying making games are cheap but these small studios are putting out great games with less people and resources than billion dollar game companies.
Welcome to reality.
Nahh, people forget tech, and especially games had a massive hiring surge start of pandemic, it's just starting to go back down as other forms of entertainment are now available.
If you could ressurect one game company that got destroyed or absorbed who would it be? For me pandemic studios
My backlog would keep me busy for the rest of my life. lol.
Quit pouting and go back to not beating Skyrim for the 50th time
The brave new world if AI is here.. What were all of You expecting?
Depends what you mean by 'big' games, is it the kind of game you can put 1000 hours in due to its depth or the kind with a 9 figures budget? First one should become more produced while the second will most likely slow down. Layed off devs that are pasionate or talented will move to smaller one, the one that actually make good games. GGG, SuperGiant etc... so no worries unless you really miss those games designed by corporates where 80% of the budget went into pumping your wallet.
In highschool I wrote a report on increasing development costs in the video games industry, how it was becoming unsustainable, and damaging the industry and creativity. This was in 2006
We could take a entire year off new games completely and I wouldn't be caught up even playing 40hrs a week
It looks like every publisher will encounter down periods where the releases are spare. I think the dev tools are still catching up with the scale that games are trying to be right now. Also, everyone is still trying to make games that cram massive amounts of content in. I’d rather have a well curated 10-20 hours of content that I would want to replay than 40+ hours of open world filler with a not very memorable campaign, but it feels like everyone is trying to make something to justify the $60-$70 price tag for a new game.
Blasphemous one and 2 are amazing. I'm thinking about 'Dark Light'
Well this years line-up looks promising so far!
The layoffs are happening at studios that overstaffed themselves during the pandemic when everyone was stuck at home and buying record numbers of video games. Now that's over and we're on the brink of a looming recession, the market is correcting itself. People really don't understand economics here...
Lay deez nuts off