I spent over an hour discussing the current state of the gaming industry and all the massive layoffs. There have been around 7,800 laid off in just the first 2 months of 2024. This compares 10,500 laid off in all of 2023 and 8,500 laid off in 2022.

I do appreciate everyone who checked out the video. It does help out my small channel, which focuses on gaming news and lets plays. 

What is everyone's thoughts on all the layoffs happening across the industry?

The biggest layoffs in 2024 so far include 1,900 at the Microsoft Gaming Division (mainly at Activision Blizzard with some at Xbox and Bethesda), 1,800 at Unity, 900 at PlayStation, ~670 at EA, 530 at Riot Games, and 500 at Twitch.

I hope everyone who has been laid off is able to find new and good work quickly.

Here is a site that keeps track of all the layoffs happening: https://publish.obsidian.md/vg-layoffs/Archive/2024

I think the question is, are they expecting the people who remain to do more work without raises? If not, then I guess the people layed off were not necessary. And it sucks for them, but it is what it is. On the other hand, if they are trying to squeeze more out of the rest of their staff, then those people were actually needed, and fuck those greedy assholes. 

Same old story and common across multiple industries. Shareholders and board members never have enough money despite having more than enough.

It seems Japan is faring best, so that begs the question why is it so prevalent in certain countries like UK and UsA.

The only company that really manages their staff properly seems to be Nintendo. They are no longer conservative as they were with regards to employee numbers, especially with the jump to HD but they've went about it the correct way. They're employing within their means, keeping budgets for games at a reasonable level and paying staff enough to keep retention high.

A good few companies would do well to have a good hard look at how Nintendo does it's business because as far as I'm concerned out of every business in the gaming industry at the moment, Nintendo will be the last man standing.

Hiring extra people because you can isn't exactly a great way to do business and messes with people livelihoods when the inevitable happens.

Greed.  

Exclusivity will be gone soon at the current rate with all these losses

Japanese studios aren't going for the highest tier visuals, that's probably one big reason. It's probably not been since the PS2 era since Japanese studios held the crown for best graphics (Resident Evil 4 on the GameCube?), Japanese games look good but it's usually because of art style, not for pushing tech. 

The one Japanese studio (the Square side of Square-Enix) that still is enamored with the "blockbuster graphics" idea bet heavily on the big budget Final Fantasy XVI growing the brand in the West -- it didn't and their stock has been in the toilet ever since. 

Their new president is running around now saying they need to change things up (surprise, surprise). 

Most of the companies laying off substantial numbers of people seem to be the soulless corporations whose business model revolves around swallowing up studios and harvesting their brands. How surprising...

Anyway, enough of my glib take. In seriousness, I thought there was supposed to be unionization in the video game industry? What happened to that? It appears like these decisions being made at the whim of a shareholder-run board of directors without reports of any kind of bargaining going on. So, who has employees backs in the gaming industry?

Aside from Nintendo, yup that does look like where we are headed.