"Over 70%, and in some years 75%, of the layoffs have been in North America," Satvat shared. "North America used to have 30%, 35%, 40% of the open roles, and that number is now down to 25%. Overall employment in the industry has actually increased since pre-COVID. But if you're in North America in a AAA studio, you're like, 'what are you talking about? The workforce is cut by 15% to 20%'. Versus if you're in a studio in Asia you're like, 'What are you talking about? We've seen an increase in jobs'."

"And here's another stat, over 50% of the cuts globally have been in California. California AAA is like the epicentre of the difficulty."

Over 50% of the Job Cuts in Video Games Are in California

That makes sense. California is a pretty expensive state to live in. Salaries need to be higher to compensate for living there.

Combination of a lot of video game development being based out of the US/California alone in the first place, plus American business practises and culture, which tend to favour short term profitability at all costs.

The AAA business model is kinda broken, at least in the West. Even when companies post record profits, they lay off workers in droves.

Lots of businesses (and people) are leaving California. Cali is (and has been) tracking in the wrong direction.

The USA isn't business friendly these days... And although it's funny to say, "ability to screw over their employees" isn't what most companies are looking for.

Everyone's playing ROMs of old games

Most younger gamers are playing Roblox, Fortnite, and Minecraft. 

Ewww, hopefully one day they realize there's more to gaming than just the same three live service slop 

Yeah, North America is shit for the videogame industry right now, it doesn't matter whether it's California, Washington, Texas, Florida, etc. It's more notable with California because so much of the videogame industry was crammed into California, in particular places like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Monica, etc. But you'll have the same issue when they decide to cram their industry into a different state.

The layoffs are a combination of what has already been stated, a lot of videogame development being based in the USA to begin with, America's shitty business practices and obsessive focus on short term profitability and constant growth. Then there was the COVID boost which caused a bunch of stupid investors and analysts to predict that gaming would see constant notable growth but post-COVID gaming growth has been essentially stagnant which isn't what capitalism wants, it wants constant growth, so when things are stagnant people pull out investment.

America is more obsessed with this than most even if it affects every country, but Asian countries like China are seeing growth and Japan has far fewer layoffs. The gaming industry needs to be diversified anyway (development wise), there are plenty of states which could be invested in, but that's not what is happening or what will happen, companies will seek out cheaper labour, instead of America it will be a cheaper eastern European country, or a cheaper Asian country and work will be outsourced to these countries.

The entire American videogame industry is being battered by mass layoffs, the fact that California has the highest % is circumstantial because California is a massive tech hub where a huge chunk of videogame development is localised but it's not exactly great anywhere in America (or Canada). Meanwhile Asia and Eastern Europe are experiencing nice growth.

Yup, even highly profitable studios or videogames are receiving mass layoffs, it's simple greed, they're looking for ways to make things as cheap as possible to make things as profitable as possible, a constant obsession with squeezing as much profit out as possible, especially now when the overall gaming industry is stagnant or only growing slightly, they want to squeeze it for all it's worth.

I'm actually curious to see what Cali does in the future. Businesses are leaving, people are leaving. If Cali doesn't get cost of living and taxes under control, the entire state is going to be a ****show.