2024 was not the most ideal year for the gaming industry and much less so for video game devs. The dreaded mass layoffs resulted in 14,600 people losing their jobs. The effect seems more profound, however, since the people affected weren’t limited to those losing their jobs but also their peers and 41 percent of people working in the video game industry.
The specific data was presented by the GDC’s 2025 State of the Game Industry, where they surveyed thousands of individuals working in the game industry. The numbers are rather worrying for anyone pursuing or wanting to pursue a game development career.
Of the 3,000 game developers surveyed, 11 percent answered that they were laid off in the last 12 months. Meanwhile, 41 percent reported that they were impacted by the layoffs regardless of whether they were directly laid off or not. The three major reasons for layoffs were corporate restructuring, declining revenue, and market shifts or industry trends.
Effects of the Layoffs
Some respondents cited the COVID-era overhiring to meet a demand that was never going to be permanent. Unrealistic expectations for bigger games and poor leadership were also among the culprits, according to the respondents.
Meanwhile, some of the anonymous respondents also wrote specific notes on their survey answers, most of which paint a grim picture for anyone working in game development, these were some of the quoted replies:
“The games industry is killing me.”
“Still unemployed after a year.”
“I have been laid off three
times in the last year. The first
two times I was able to find a
role. My current studio just laid
everyone off. I was only there
four months and haven’t found
anything yet.”“I had to get a job in a different
industry.”
GDC didn’t exactly give more details on how the mass layoffs affected 41 percent of the respondents, but naturally, simply seeing colleagues disappear from the work environment hurts morale. Other reasons could mean increased workloads or the lack of job security.
Regardless, the trend of 1 in 10 developers getting laid off in the industry hasn’t stabilized yet, and even now in 2025, there are already further layoff predictions from major games industry players like Microsoft. Microsoft most notably laid off more than 4,000 people in 2024 while its CEO’s pay has somehow risen by 63 percent or $73 million.
