And it’s not getting much better.
GDC’s annual State of the Game Industry report has been released in the past 24 hours, and it’s not pretty reading. 2023 was a pretty awful year for game developers, with mass industry layoffs and studio closures — from Vanpool, Volition Studios, Brace Yourself Games, Crystal Dynamics, Free Radical, and more — GDC’s latest report finds that a staggering one-third of video game developers have been impacted by layoffs in some way (via Push Square).
In fact, it’s just over one-third. 35% of developers “aid they’ve been impacted by layoffs—either by having some layoffs take place within their team or company or by being laid off themselves.” The biggest number of layoffs come from the ever-vital quality assurance teams — you know, the people who make sure the games we’re playing work. GDC found that 22% of QA devs were laid off in 2023. Business and finance, on the other hand, only suffered 2% of layoffs.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
