“I woke up and got an email that said, 'We're holding a company-wide meeting.' I knew right away.”
James (not his real name) was visiting family earlier this year when he saw the message.
“I started thinking about all the things I was going to lose.”
He worked as a game designer for one of the UK's largest companies. Video game I've had a studio for almost 10 years. It was a job he had loved and dreamed of since he was nine years old. But lately he's been worried.
All around him, friends in the gaming industry were being laid off.
“My heart was racing. What can I do? There have been so many layoffs, so I wasn't the only one looking for work at the moment. They all happened at the same time. Ta.”
He attended a meeting where his worst fears were confirmed. The company's CEO said about 25% of the studio's workforce will be cut. James was one of them.
“It was tough,” he said, shaking his head.
The world of gaming is insecure right now. Games Jobs Live reports that more than 8,000 jobs have been cut globally since the start of this year, with job openings in the UK hitting a record low in March.
But in London, BAFTA Game Awards 2024 begins last week, Gamers can just have fun.
It was a glamorous and glamorous night with a black tie dress code. A red carpet was rolled out along London's South Bank as hundreds of gaming's elite gathered.
The team behind Baldur's Gate 3, the Dungeons and Dragons hit and later Game of the Year winner, walked around the carpet taking selfies.
Actor Naji Jeter, who played Spider-Man in the latest game version of the comic, was in London for the first time for the event.
“Oh my god, I'm so nervous,” he told Sky News before winning the leading role trophy for his performance.
comedian Phil WangHe was the host for the night and swooned over the legends of the game he played as a kid.
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“It's hard to see people I respect struggle.”
However, the gaming world is closely related. Because workers often have to move to new cities and towns for work, co-workers can form a large part of people's social circles. Layoffs were never far from people's minds.
Baldur's Gate 3 narrator Amelia Tyler says, “There are people in this industry that I respect who work so hard and are so talented, but it's really amazing to see them struggle.'' It's tough,” he said.
“I think we can get out of this situation, but it will take time.”
Mass layoffs have hit the industry hard over the past two years. In 2023, more than 10,500 of his employees working in video games around the world lost their jobs. In 2022, he said, more than 8,500 jobs were lost.
People had hoped that the situation would improve in 2024, but four months into the year a further 8,000 jobs have been lost and the UK is far from affected.
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“So much institutional knowledge has been lost.”
According to industry group Ukie, about 1,000 people have lost their jobs nationwide since the cull began. This means that more than one in every 30 people involved in video games in the UK will be affected.
Swen Vincke, founder of the studio that produced Baldur's Gate 3, didn't say anything.
“That's stupid. There's so much institutional knowledge that's being lost, and this industry is thriving, so it doesn't make sense.”
“As more and more people play games, we should value the developers behind them.”
He has a point. In the UK alone, over 40 million people play video games on a regular basis, and the industry in the UK is growing, with the economy currently worth £7.82 billion.
what happened?
George Osborne, one of the experts writing the video game industry memo, said there are three problems. The new coronavirus, game release delays, and the cost of living crisis.
“The video game industry was hit by the impact of coronavirus later than other industries,” he said.
When people were stuck at home with nothing to do due to the coronavirus, video game sales skyrocketed. In just one year, the industry brought in 21% more money around the world, with £27.6 billion more in 2020 than in 2019, according to global accountancy firm PwC.
In response, the industry has flourished. The game studio grew quickly and hired more staff.
“That created a bubble in the industry, investors overinvested in the game, and then they got burned out because the market wasn't quite there yet,” Osborn said.
After the lockdown ended, people stopped shopping.
With the lockdown over, people are back outside and no longer buying games to fill their time.
Then there was a delay. At least 60 major games have had their release dates postponed to 2021.
Most didn't explain why, but developers then talked about the difficulty of working on this kind of game remotely and in lockdown. Once games started being released, they flooded the market, making it difficult for smaller games to be seen.
2023 saw blockbuster hits The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Alan Wake 2, Resident Evil 4, and Super Mario Bros. Wonder all arrive, each selling millions of copies. . This year has been a good year for big games, but a very difficult year for other games.
James, the developer who was laid off, said his boss expected sales to remain at the same level as during COVID-19.
“I felt like the industry was still growing. It just wasn't growing as much as they wanted it to.”
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Like the rest of the world, gaming is also experiencing a cost of living crisis.
“Video game prices haven't changed much over the past five years,” Osborn said.
“That means the cost of making games has increased significantly while the market has softened. So even though the industry was doing really well last year, it wasn't enough.”
Things may be getting better…
But there may be light at the end of the tunnel. Ukie has released figures that suggest the industry is growing again.
While it hasn't reached pandemic-level growth where double digits were the norm, it added 4.4% last year. Ukey chief executive Nick Poole was keen to send a message of optimism.
“When you look at how gaming has permeated other parts of our culture, what we're witnessing is an industry that has reached maturity.”
And it was good news for James, too. He lost his job, which he thought was stable, but found a new studio to work in in the city where his friends were. During his first job interview, he asked about the company's finances.
“Maybe I was a little naive, but I started in the industry during boom times, so every job was about security and what I could offer. “It doesn’t feel the same,” he said.
Sam Lake, author of Max Payne and Alan Wake, had some wisdom to share after more than 30 years of work.
“I want to have hope. From my experience, given all these things, it swings like a pendulum. Things get worse, you have more problems, you have financial difficulties. But at least so far, we've always gone backwards.”
