finance

It Sucks to Work in the Video-Game Industry Right Now

Source: Bloomberg Business

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Hi everyone. Today we're lamenting the challenges facing video-game workers, but first...

This week's top gaming news:

The PlayStation 5 is getting a price hike to $650 as Sony Group Corp. deals with tariffs, chip shortages and other "continued pressures in the global economic landscape"
Hit Roblox game Steal a Brainrot is dealing with copycats
AI perfected chess; humans made it unpredictable again
A game called Five Nights at Epstein's is going viral on US school campuses

Bad times

Nine years ago, as the online game Fortnite began its meteoric rise to the top of the charts, ultimately generating hundreds of millions of dollars a month in sales, boards of directors across the world began asking their C-suites: "Why don't we have a Fortnite?"

Many companies had already gone all-in on "games as a service" -- games that are updated and monetized for months or years after they are released -- and Fortnite's astronomical success just accelerated the trend. After all, having a consistent money-printer can offer a comforting level of predictability in an industry that is usually volatile and driven by hits.

But Fortnite, like all things, can't keep growing indefinitely. The online shooter remains popular but has seen a big drop in players over the last year, which is why maker Epic Games Inc. laid off more than 1,000 employees earlier this week. In a blog post announcing the news, Chief Executive Officer Tim Sweeney said the company was spending more than it earned and that "we've had challenges delivering consistent Fortnite magic with every season."

Companies all over the world have spent the last decade chasing the live-service dragon, wasting billions of dollars and tearing apart prestigious studios along the way. Meanwhile, even one of the most successful live-service games of all time can't make ends meet.

Imagine how it must feel to be employed at one of the studios that's been trying to recreate Fortnite only to learn this week that even Fortnite can't recreate Fortnite.

It's a scary time to work in the video-game industry, which is still in the thick of a downturn that began in 2023. The industry has seen dozens of studios close and tens of thousands of people lose their jobs thanks to a number of factors including swelling development budgets and an oversaturated market. Even people working on the year's biggest and most successful games, like 2025's smash hit Battlefield 6, have faced layoffs.

At the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco earlier this month, I was talking to a grizzled veteran who has been working in games since the 1990s. He pointed out that the industry always has its ups and downs, and that this current period is reminiscent of the global recession in 2008. But there's one key difference: the scale.

In 2006, the US video-game industry had around 24,000 employees, according to the Entertainment Software Association, the industry's lobbyist group. By 2023, that number had soared to 104,000, according to the same group.

In the years following the 2008 recession, the global video-game industry reportedly eliminated around 11,500 jobs, according to estimates at the time. That's about one-quarter of the roughly 44,000 cuts that have happened across the video-game industry from 2022 through 2025, according to estimates from industry executive Amir Satvat. (Note that these are global numbers while the previous paragraph was only US numbers. It's much harder to find estimates on the number of total worldwide jobs in the industry.)

Because the number of cuts is so much higher this time around, the 1,000 people laid off by Epic this week will be entering the most crowded job market the video-game industry has ever seen. More than 25% of the industry has been impacted by a layoff in the last two years, according to a GDC survey. Game companies are still hiring, but often for contract roles (with fewer benefits and no guarantees), and there aren't enough positions to account for all of the people out of work.

Epic gave each of their laid-off employees a severance package of at least four months (jumping to five or six months based on time served at the company). That's well above average. Under normal circumstances, it would make for a healthy cushion as people look for new jobs.

But in this climate, as many unemployed game developers can attest, it can take at least a year to find full-time employment. Comb through game-dev LinkedIn and you'll see the results: countless game workers, some with many years of experience, who have been job-hunting for months if not years. It's a miserable game of musical chairs.

I've heard countless horror stories over the last few months. One veteran composer with three decades of experience told PC Gamer yesterday that he's gotten a single interview in the last year. Some have shared stories with me about coming close to securing new jobs only to see those positions evaporate because that company had a mass layoff.

Fifteen years ago, anyone looking to make games had two main options: they could go corporate, pursuing financial stability but perhaps giving up their creative autonomy and working on projects they don't find all that interesting. Or they could go indie, abandoning a steady paycheck in favor of freedom and the dream of a big payday.

Now, with even hit games like Fortnite and Battlefield 6 shedding staff, the notion of stability has been completely shattered.

Of course, the idea of stability in the video-game industry has always been something of an illusion. Back in 2014, BioShock creator Irrational Games shuttered without warning despite releasing several big hits. But in recent years, and especially over the last few months, the promise of stable employment in the video-game industry has completely evaporated.

Typically, when video-game studios put sections on their websites for job listings, they use the word "careers" -- an implication of long-term commitment. Who could possibly believe that anymore? Even game developers at companies that seem secure are constantly feeling the anxiety that a surprise all-hands meeting could arrive at any time.

In this turbulent era, many industries feel like they're on the brink of widespread changes. Game development will undoubtedly be at the top of the list.

What to play this weekend

I'm hoping to find some time to check out Bungie Inc.'s Marathon. Extraction shooters aren't normally my thing, and it's hard to play online games when you've got two small children. But enough of my friends have been raving about Marathon's snappy design to make me curious to check it out. Plus: the art design is stellar.

Got a news tip or story to share? You can reach Jason at jschreier10@bloomberg.net or confidentially at jasonschreier@protonmail.com.