Many folks have said it's because the studios and publishers are losing money from making bad games and low sales, but these studios actually appear to be still very financially successful.
Could it be that these studios are actually only laying people off because they simply don't need as many employees working for them thanks to AI-generated content and in-game microtransactions?
I dont care
This, I got enough shit going on in my life, games will keep coming either way.
You cared enough to respond
Yes, it's both cost saving and a matter of quality hires being priotized. They're cutting the fat. That is, the whiny SJWs who contribute nothing to game design and are better suited for being Walmart greeters.
>incel headcanon
Kek
Hiding your head in your axewound like you always do won't save you from the truth, troony 😉
>everyone i don't like is a troony
Meds
nta but he provided anecdotal evidence. When all you have in response is ad hominem he's won the argument. I know you troons are used to winning arguments through threats of violence or cancelling and personal attacks but that shit won't fly on an anonymous forum.
Gender Dysphoria is a symptom of Schizophrenia, YOU take your meds, man.
>mentally ill person gets called out on his mental illness
>comeback is "Meds"
not the best choice of words
I wonder if these people will ever realize they only got a job because of low interest rates and that their positions at the company are essentially made up, and they're not useful anymore.
>The privileged folks
You mean the people who are there on merit?
>Fluent in showtunes
Always knew something felt off about The Brak Show...
I'd hardly claim there's anything good about any aspect of EA. It's not like they haven't killed off every other studio they obtained and would prefer to shill their FIFA loot boxes since it's among their largest revenue sources. All of their good series are largely dead, and their inferior versions of sports games compared to what they made decades ago is all they care about.
This b***h has a 1200+ page thread on kiwifarms, that should tell you something.
the one part that always baffles me is why do these useful idiots never lash out at the out of touch turbo israeli ~~*execs*~~ who fire them?
why do they always blame "gamers" (aka their audience) for not buying fourth-rate garbage?
>That game can't be played indefinitely.
plus execs can as they bounce from one place to another, moron. and companies can do it for so long it might as well be forever.
if their careers and personal finances were at stake or they risked jailtime, things would change radically. instead they get rewarded with multimillion dollar severance packages and a new job instead starting as frycooks at mcdonalds.
and if you point the finger at them they've got a gorillion excuses to duck their responsibility and cover their asses (the market has changed, we hit our KPIs, we followed all recommended practices and industry standards (especially common when they get hacked), we couldn't have foreseen this sudden development, the world wasn't ready for it, we didn't have the right focus, etc.)
>why do they always blame "gamers" (aka their audience) for not buying fourth-rate garbage?
Because the israeli subversion convinced them that it"s the duty of the customer to waste money they dont have on things they dont need. The customer is not supposed to think or see patterns, he's supposed to spend $70 on fourth-rate garbage, defend it because he spent money on it, and do it again when they release more fourth-rate garbage.
The customer learning the trend and actively choosing to not spend money on them is a slap in the face to these types. it's why they're especially furious about that sweet baby steam curator
why indeed
it's because that's all people hire these days. if anyone is gonna get fired, it's the people they hired.
>troony seethe
Anon we've had this conversation many times. The days of cheap low interest money after the Subprime mortgage crisis is over.
Companies are realizing they can no longer skate along on cheap money, notably taking out new loans to pay off old ones. Now is the time for austerity and belt tightening. Tech is just the most vulnerable because they played the fastest and loosest with the previous economic reality. Many will likely fail.
Yes. When you delete most of your employees your profit goes up because the expenses from paying their wages go down.
Do they ever discuss what kind of jobs are cut? Is it programmers or just romance architects and inclusivity supervisors?
It's mostly artists, problem is these are specialized people, they are excellent but in one very specific field.
no devs get fired
its "game developers" who lack the game or developer part but claim they are game devs, like the fricking community managers claiming they are game devs
every time someone talks about it it's some diversity dead end useless jobs or some community manager bullshit
No dev gets fired, it's all the useless parts that do nothing but bring the quality of the games down
HR department and other similar rainbow hair baby rapists by the looks of it. They're the only ones whining about it openly at least.
>trash gets treated like trash
don't see a problem
That's just those groups in general anon.
It's the same reason they can "study" Twatter and find women are more affected by "online harassment". Normal people, especially men, know not to whine in public like this and are more likely to actually make use of the tools available to them if necessary.
While the insane and emotionally infirm will go out of their way to bring it on themselves, block buttons etc. be damned. They need to see what's being said so they can bathe in the font of victimhood.
the people writing these articles are so sheltered
this is not just affecting gaming lol, stop pretending game devs are uniquely affected
This does no one remember the fed raising interest rates all of last year with the expressed purpose of trying to get people to lose their jobs?
lol this i work in tech (but not the games) and it is a bloodbath here. they're starting to chew through all the bootcampers and overpaid benchwarming seniors so my job security is ironically tied to how little they pay me and how keenly they're aware that my domain knowledge outstrips theirs that they can't replace me for less.
people I know in other fields repeat the same. there is absolutely a spillover effect from covid overhiring and wfh and corporate america in conjunction with the govt are trying to punish the citizenry. wages are terrible right now and most people are starting to cut back on their spending unless they're already obscenely wealthy or moronic. there's no way it doesn't backfire.
>wages are terrible right now
wages have been up month over month for 2+ years and aren't going down, that's WHY they keep raising interest rates, the job market is crazy white hot.
Tech is getting fricked because (for games specifically) a lot of projects that were formed during Covid are getting axed, and because they hired a ton of people to facilitate pure WFH they no longer need.
Even despite the layoffs, the market has been putting up positive job numbers.
>wages have been up month over month for 2+ years and aren't going down
still lagging behind inflation.
>devs say piracy is killing the industry
>sales are better than ever according to experts
>devs get fired by the same corporations they constantly bootlicked
ironic justice but still justice
>Frontload DEI for ez recession $$$
>Said DEI kills your company
>Double down for more $$$ and fire competent employees vs. Fire the DEI and try to save your company
>SURPRISE! Foreign-backed investment funds behind DEI funding in the West
Unregulated capitalism deserves to be history
>Unregulated capitalism
You fricking morons have no idea just how many fricking regulations there are attached to running a business.
Chang, don't make posts within 5s of each other. It's obvious what you're up to.
I'm the second one you quoted and it was an actual question.
! Foreign-backed investment funds behind DEI funding in the West
What happened this time?
Let me fix that headline.
>What is going on with layoffs in the western video games industry?
There you go.
>make moronic LGBBQTWTF job positions in Gaming
>that bubble bursts and layoffs of these positions ensue
>why layoffs????????????????????????????
Pretty obvious with how bloated AAA game design has become. If your game doesn't sell 5+ million copies, it's a flop.
You don't see this problem with companies making reasonably budgeted titles.
Cutting the black folk? Good
>biggest intertainment industry in the world, more than cinema and music combined
>mass layoffs every few months or so
>budget for big games balooning like crazy
>deep ideological conflicts at all levels making devs jump at each other's throat
very healthy industry kek
>intertainment
>balooning
moronic ESL
>folks
this is how i knew inmediatly your opinion doesn't mean shit and anything you say its moronic.
>folks
Stopped reading there.
According to this. It is done by design. Attract investors by making it look like your company is GROWING with mass hiring. Then when the expense starts to catch up, CASH OUT with mass layoffs to harvest.
>Attract investors by making it look like your company is GROWING with mass hiring. Then when the expense starts to catch up, CASH OUT with mass layoffs to harvest
i feel like this should be illegal, tho, that explain how trannies and woketards got their jobs.
Ehh, I can see how scummy it is, but those people who were laid off got valuable experience and money while working for the company.
The economy is shit. Video games aren't the only industry affected. Lots of places are laying off employees now that the free money train isn't running.
Bidenomics happened
>but these studios actually appear to be still very financially successful
Yeah, still, but less
>thanks to AI-generated content
The people fired didn't really have jobs that can by AI'd, such as black hirerers and inclusivity tweeter posters
man maybe releasing a good game once every 20 years might help
They cut all the chaff, offload work onto AI and they still can't make good games. Doom Eternal was the last good release from a big studio. Every game I've enjoyed since has been a small indie project. Four years, and nothing of note from the industry in that time. Truly astounding.
They can't even remake games like tetris without fricking it up somehow. It's a broken industry.
I really wonder how many factors are contributing to AAA development being so munted right now. Off the top of my head, you've got:
>Corporate/bureaucratic interference
>Marketing people in positions of power, rather than products people
>Revolving door policy for interns, they're used as expendable resources
>Risk aversion at every level
>Hiring practices which don't favour merit
>Shit pay compared to other tech industries
>People who either don't get the medium or hate it in positions of authority with these companies
>AAA game code are labyrinthine masses of spaghetti built with a poor foundation, making theoretically simple tasks take huge amounts of time
All the above and more. Microstransactions, season passes, "live services", all of these things are burning the customer out. You can only play so many live service games because there is only so long in a day. While a game like Arkham Asylum was 10 hours and you could slam through it, feel satisfied, then move on to next product.
>folks
Two words. You couldn't even make it two words before fricking up.
I've noticed a lot of trannies say folks. Fricking weirdos have been raiding us lately.
Why are there SO MANY FRICKING TRANNIES on Ganker now? Not even like 2 years ago were there this many.
Lonely isolated young males feel invisible and use it as a means to attain attention. It's exceptionally pathetic and literally the final stage of inceldom.
>I can't attract a woman, so I must become the woman
it's a big place with a lot of traffic where you are anonymous, this is a marketing heaven.
This is why people should put things only normal people and not undercover shills could type without taking the boot
Things such as : homosexuals get the rope, Tiananmen Square massacre Winnie the pooh
You got scared when they called you /misc/ and didn't gatekeep
Same with "y'all" trannies and leftist can't even hide themselves on an anonymous imageboard without their poison coming out
None of the developers who made games I enjoyed got fired.
Why should I be sad when people who hate me struggle?
It's like... a mystery.
a real mystery
Oh no
>folks
Stopped reading there. Whatever said after that is leftist propaganda.
No. Because Ai is a joke. A gimmick, and at best a scapegoat for woke and anti white trash culture. Get fricked.
>Could it be that these studios are actually only laying people off because they simply don't need as many employees
yes.
>thanks to AI-generated content and in-game microtransactions?
no.
two things happened:
first, there was a bubble in vidya sales from the pandemic. everyone was locked inside and ran out of netflix to watch, so vidya sales went up.
line go up capitalism assumes all growth is infinite, so short sighted companies did big hires with the assumption that this level of consumption would never end.
then the lockdown ended and people started going outside again.
there's also been a trend in tech companies to hire developers for no other reason than to deny talented workers to the competition. that trend is slowing down so all of these spite hires are being laid off.
thirdly there's a broader trend in corporations to just burn everything into the ground to squeeze out big temporary gains for shareholders. why reinvest into the company when you can just do layoffs and use that extra dosh for stock buybacks?
AI is the scapegoat which further motivates the remaining employees to work harder "because I may be next"
Don’t get me wrong, there may be AI firings in the future, but that’s not what’s going on now, the tech is still far too immature for production work on an industry wide scale
The real answer is what everyone’s already said: a perfect storm of coof over hiring and Based Powell teaching the market some restraint
They're getting rid of WFH leeches, that's it.
Capitalism dictates that "the line" must go up, and it must go up by more than it went up last time. In order to make sure that these companies are "very financially successful", they have to reduce their workforces.
t. knower
>knower
>blaming "capitalism"
Larper, you mean.
>ESG gives you money if you hire specific people
>company hires specific people regardless of skill
>ESG stops giving money
>fire same specific people because they bring nothing of value themselves
Whether or not AI became an option to them has nothing to do with the firings.
I left Ubisoft 2 years ago, then for some stupid reason wanted to give myself a "break".
Only started looking around for new jobs in 2023, when the layoffs started ramping up.
I'm still unemployed.
I hate my life
My brother in Christ go learn another tech industry that will pay a lot better. Or at the very least set up a small business. I used to sell stickers made from vinyl. Just needed to buy a stick machine and set up an etsy shop. Made like $800 dollarydoos a month plus centerlink.
it's over
They're selling better than ever but making less profit because AAA studios now need focus group researchers to tell devs to put blacks and wymyn everywhere, useless diversity hires to bloat and sabotage development, and spend massive amounts of money getting famous names to voice and mocap.
SONY recently announced that PS5 was a complete failure and they are closing down and firing everyone.
And console sloppers keep buying everything. Games getting into the mainstream was such a fricking mistake
>SONY recently announced...
You are lying. Sony never announced this.
Link?
Stop it. Stop making fun of the useless diversity hires
Multiple things happened, ESG lost it's idiot investors booku bucks, they all pulled the kill switch. 90% the ultra high investment games were based around ESG and now without the funding actually have to succeed to fund their next game(they didnt), diversity hires are the actual toxic employees and they have driven out most the actual talent causing the quality of the product to plummet despite increased funding(all of which is going into over paid diversity hires), with most their workforce being shit they now actually have no reason not to trust in AI since even if it's shit it's still better than what they got.
Nintendo WON
Sales thru the roof sure.
But debts looking down from a top its mighty throne yelling, "i can hardly see you down there!"
morons out here buying 2cd and 3rd yachts like a business doesnt need cash on hand and they can just keep borrowing it.
The ESG money dried off.
It's a cycle, companies do mass layoffs when it's time for bonuses to maximize payments to executives, with a focus on senior staff since they're the ones due for a pay raise.
Brainlet here
Isn't it just a combination of companies trimming the Christmas staff, ESG's free money running dry and AI making it easy to fire all artists?
>ESG's free money running dry
the amount of people on Ganker who think that loans are free money is worrying. none of you can be trusted with credit card
>ACKTUALLY it wasn't just free money, gotcha!
And? It doesn't change the fact that sucking ESG/DEI's dick gives those companies more points to get more loans with lower interest rates, if anything it makes them look even worse because they force this propaganda on everyone's throat just to accumulate a bunch of debt not even real free money
all i said was that there was no "free money". calm down.
>all i said was that there was no "free money"
what about the national debt?
That's how all big business treats them anon.
C suite people constantly jump companies for a reason. They debt max until they can't debt max anymore and jump ship so they're not left holding the bag.
Actually, I should also add, this is how all politicians work too. Especially if they lack term limits (although that just limits the amount of time they can do it, they still do it).
"Your" debt isn't going up constantly because they're paying it off, after all.
>the amount of people on Ganker who think that loans are free money is worrying
but they are
>take out loan at low interest rate to finance project. most likely beats inflation
>wages keep being paid, everything runs smoothly
>when money runs low, take another loan to cancel previous one
>it's all backed by company assets or future profits or whatever
>if anything bad happens execs know they're shielded from any negative consequences (won't go to jail, won't get foreclosed or anything)
>if they get fired they get their juicy golden parachutes
>or they can jump ship before the ship sinks thanks to their connections
>plus they always fail upwards
That game can't be played indefinitely.
See evergrande turning into dust.
Yeah it can, you moron. Tencent is Evergrande 2.0. And when that goes down, the chinks will move the money to another MNC like Xiaomi
Oh I saw the thumbnail and thought it was going to be about circumcision
they wouldnt lay off personell if theyre doing well and growing as company
that's not how it works
The companies simply realized that hiring more people does not mean better games
>management asked devs to do very stupid stuff like the most outrageous monetization, shitty dlc or implementing esg into their projects
>no-one raise his voice internally or even voiced a concern saying it's fricking stupid and refused to do it
It's like accepting unpaid overtime or dangerous work without ppi, once you show management you are a cuck ready to accept anything for your paycheck, you will get fricked, it's just a matter of when
>actually appear to be still very financially successful.
yes, because appearances are everything. They're making a few million USD for a game they invested several hundred million and 5+ years into developing. Nothing about the industry imploding screams financial success
Neither.
>ESG money has dried up for various reasons
>most people who work on games are contractors that are fired when whatever they're working on causing mass firings to happen cyclically
Ideological demagogues being laid off? Oh no no say it ain't so what about all the hecking precious nonwhites and psychotic sexual fetishists with zero marketable skills or anything of worth to add to society?
So why all the layoffs if the games industry is actually still financially successful?
>Could it be that these studios are actually only laying people off because they simply don't need as many employees
why do homosexuals always oversimplify everything and pretend it's always one of 2 alternatives?
a big part of it is interest rate hikes and investment money drying up.
They are preoaring for decreasing purchasing power.
The being financially successful is ridiculous. They all rely on government gibs. Their profitability is also tanking.