For people who make video games, 2024 was a year of holding on for dear life. At the annual Game Developers Conference in March, “Survive till ’2

2024 Was the Year the Bottom Fell Out of the Games Industry

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2024-12-25 00:30:03

For people who make video games, 2024 was a year of holding on for dear life. At the annual Game Developers Conference in March, “Survive till ’25” was this year’s incantation, summoned to keep morale on pace. Others resorted to full-on screams, as layoffs in the industry charted record highs and developers found themselves under attack online for conspiratorial nonsense.

In 2023, more than 10,000 developers lost their jobs; one-third of game-makers surveyed at the beginning of this year reported they’d been affected by layoffs in some way. While there were wins for labor organizers at big studios like Activision Blizzard, and collective action around fighting for protection from the encroachment of AI on employment, the industry’s collective brain drain continued in 2024 as workers lost jobs en masse. Six months in, this year’s layoff tally had already surpassed that of 2023. According to Matthew Ball, an adviser and producer in the games and TV space, 2024’s job-loss count will wind up being about 40 percent higher than the previous year’s.

"The explanation is complex and wide-ranging for the same reason the layoffs are so deep and continuous, and sit alongside many studio closures and even more canceled games,” Ball says.