It’s no secret to anyone who paid attention to games industry news for even a week in 2023, that the year was ripe with excellent games, and massive layoffs.
It was a great year for players that just want to play good games, uncaring about everything behind it, but a much more depressing one for everyone paying attention.
On Thursday, GDC published its State Of The Game Industry report for 2024, a report on the industry based on surveying developers across the world.
Part of this report revealed some shocking, though not entirely surprising, numbers regarding layoffs and how developers are feeling going into 2024.
“One-third of developers (35%) said they’ve been impacted by layoffs—either by having some layoffs take place within their team or company or by being laid off themselves.” GDC said in its report.
Another unsurprising fact revealed by the report is that it was Quality Assurance teams who were hit the hardest, with 22% of 2023’s layoffs targeting QA teams.
But that doesn’t mean developers on a whole aren’t worried about layoffs. Most of them still are, and they feel like it could be them next sometime this year.
“Over half of respondents (56%) expressed some level of concern that their company could see layoffs in the next 12 months, while one-third said they weren’t at all concerned.
When asked to share their thoughts on the rise of layoffs in the game industry, many developers cited post-pandemic course correction, studio conglomeration, and economic uncertainty as possible explanations, and some expressed a desire for unionization to better protect workers.”
Source – [GDC]