If you’ve seen any news from the games industry, you’ll know that over the last 3-4 years there has been a high number of mass layoffs. It seems to be happening everywhere all of the time. Let’s talk about what’s happening, why it’s happening and what we can potentially expect to happen next. 

So far in 2025, around 4000 workers in the games industry have been laid off. It sounds like a lot, but this is actually down from the previous two years. In 2024, 14,600 people were made redundant as part of mass layoffs and another 10000 the year before, in 2023. We’re in the second half of the year, and projections show that 2025 will continue to have less total layoffs than the previous few years. This has left a lot of people out of work, and it hasn’t left any department alone. Roughly 1 in 10 game developers have been laid off in the last couple of years. Many studios in their formal statements about the mass layoffs have cited that they’re readjusting their ‘strategic priorities’ and ‘restructuring’. 

Why is this happening when the Games Industry is a global powerhouse, with developers and teams all over the world? The annual revenue for the whole industry is around $184 billion. These layoffs mostly are the fall out from the pandemic era boom. But with over 25,000 people out of work across all seniority levels, roles and company sizes in games, it’s going to have a knock on effect to the games and the industry as a whole. 

The Pandemic’s Effect on the Games Industry

The global pandemic in 2020 meant that lots of people were moved to working remotely. Everyone had a little more time on their hands, to pick up new and dormant hobbies. For many that was video games, creating a social escape while living through isolation and quarantine. People who hadn’t played games since they were kids, or never had before were picking up consoles to fill their time indoors. With so many people investing in games for the first time, or deciding to upgrade their consoles and everyone buying more games – 2020 caused a huge boom in gaming. 

Companies had to adjust to the increased demand and in a boom-and-bust industry, they had to make the most of the interest. So studios overhired, bringing on new teams, getting games released faster and taking risks they otherwise wouldn’t have made on smaller indie projects. The spike in player-base was matched by a hiring spike. There was an audience for every casual,weird and experimental game that developers wanted to make. The industry as a whole anticipated that this interest in gaming would only continue to rise after the pandemic. By the start of 2023, it was clear that there was a drop off in interest. The rise in player-base had dropped as people returned to their pre-pandemic lives and put away their covid-era hobbies. Companies and studios began feeling the impact of this drop with less money coming in to back up the projects they started in 2020, companies laid off entire teams, delayed games, and put projects into indefinite hiatus.

On top of this there is more pressure from investors, they saw the potential in the gaming industry in 2020, studios are now being held to the high profit standards that they saw in 2020. So we have smaller teams, having to do more with less, and make continuous profit.  It’s a factor into why we’re seeing more live service games and indies putting their games in early access, to start getting that audience funding and support so their investors will see there is money to be made from the game. That ongoing income also helps smaller developers fund their projects and pay their employees as funding and investors become increasingly scarce. 

Is this new for the industry?

Yes and no.
To quote Supermassive Games in their official statement about their layoffs in July, “The Games industry remains a challenging and ever-evolving environment.” The games industry has always been rocky. It has a history of big companies laying off entire teams after projects. Like most entertainment industries, it’s boom and bust, interest in different things changes constantly depending on current cultural movements. While speaking to different industry professionals for this article, I had someone reach out to me with their story and experience with the games industry. This person has spent the better part of 20 years trying to join the games industry, for most of that time he has ended up working parallel to it instead. Running his own graphic design studio, managing comedy workshops, and being a part of development teams of games that were never released. So the industry being difficult to break into isn’t something new and often has nothing to do with someone’s skills and capabilities. Usually with creative industries, once you’ve got your foot in the door, you’re in. and there will still be rejections and barriers. You can have 10+ years experience in the role you’re applying for and you’ll still not be considered or your application even acknowledged. 

What’s different is these layoffs are happening regardless of the size of the company. AAA, AA and independent (indie) studios saw such vast growth and success that now they’re all going through the drop and resulting in the mass redundancies. Bithell Games laid off 11 roles in early August 2025, their official statement is that this is majority of their ‘full time’ staff as they were unable to secure funding for their next project. People are taking fewer and fewer risks after the big risk investments 5 years ago, 

“We are not immune to the challenges faced by many game development teams seeking funding partners in 2024 and 2025.”. 

It’s no longer exclusive to bigger companies and studios, when I spoke with Darren from GamesJobsDirect, he shared his thoughts on what’s making these layoffs different, “What’s different now is the scale, it’s hitting AAA/indie and everything in between almost simultaneously!”

Developers are People too

There are thousands of articles written detailing these layoffs and the economics behind it all; analysing different companies’ moves and choices of where to prioritise their staff. But I want to take some time to do what the industry hasn’t been doing – focusing on the people affected by these mass layoffs. There’s a bottleneck in the industry that has been identified by everyone I have spoken to. It’s not about how good you are anymore.

If your LinkedIn is anything like mine, the feed is full of creatives being made redundant with seemingly no warning in their hundreds. As a lover of games and someone who is interested in the industry it’s so hard watching all of these people who I have spoken with or just been admiring their career from afar post on LinkedIn sharing that they’re at the 6 month mark of applying to new roles and trying to fund their dream projects.These are people who have been senior writers, designers, artists, on some of the biggest games in Gaming (Assassin’s Creed Series; The Sims; Fall Guys). 

I spoke to a Game Designer, who was made redundant with no official warning. The whole studio received an email from their new CEO saying there was a mandatory meeting in an hour, “As we had never had an emergency all-hands [meeting], it was pretty obvious what was about to come.” Within an hour they were emailed, the entire studio laid off and no support other than the required redundancy pay. The Game Designer shared with me “Tangible support was limited to the financial redundancy package which we had to flight to ensure was meaningful and fair to all those affected by the redundancy.”. The ‘superficial’ support such as career coaching and access to a solicitor, that was offered was not accessible when their digital permissions were disabled. 

These firing practices are not new, and it is not an isolated incident where people are treated with so little compassion and understanding. From the Game Designer’s experience this is not new for the games industry “But I don’t believe the environment or culture created by those who run the studios has changed at all; most employees are still seen simply as assets.” It’s not new but it needs to be highlighted. Creatives in their chosen industries commonly put up with the issues because of their love for the craft. When the people in charge care more about making their shareholders more money than caring for their employees who make them that money. 

There is hope! 

“Before this time, [the] games industry has been the most community focused industry I’ve seen.”.

Darren from GamesJobsDirect shared that from all the people he’s spoken to affected by the layoffs, that studios and investors focus on schedules, budgets and the shareholder impact and the human cost gets lost. A community centred industry is losing the community feel, developers are losing confidence in themselves and the industry. 

When I asked if Darren believes there’s an end to the layoffs in site but he said that he doesn’t think we’ve seen the end of them yet. But he does think we’ll see the industry begin to stabilize “because the talent pool is too good for studios to ignore forever and new studios and projects will emerge to fill the gap.” There are people across the games industry working to revive the community-feel of the industry. Darren and GamesJobsDirect is among these people, with aims to support developers “with visibility from the trenches… generally just connecting as many opportunities’ as I can. The human side is super important.”. As and when the industry stabilizes we can hope that this will come with some change for the labor rights and job security for games studios.

Whether these layoffs are impacting the quality of games is up for debate but laying off entire teams mid-project or giving teams less time, money and more pressure on the people creating to churn out the game. Sounds like it would have an effect on the quality; that’s objective though. Thank you to everyone who reached out to me or responded to my messages; I have kept people anonymous as I wouldn’t want their honesty to harm their futures.