It’s been a rough year for the games industry. Even though we’ve been playing quality titles almost constantly throughout 2023, the people that made them are being laid off, treated poorly, or having their studios shut down completely. Developers are constantly in fear of losing their livelihoods, as not even a game as successful as Baldur’s Gate 3stopped Hasbro from laying off 1,100 people.
It’s been so bad this past few years that even the people behind the most successful games of 2023 are no longer working for the companies benefiting from their creative work. We’ll useBaldur’s Gate 3as an example again, as Larian CEO Swen Vincke recently revealed that there’s “almost nobody left” on the Dungeons & Dragon team at Wizards of the Coast that helped greenlight the title in the first place.
Vincke used his personal Twitter account to thank a number of people who helped make Baldur’s Gate 3 a reality, which he wanted to doduring his Game of the Year acceptance speechatThe Game Awardsif he hadn’t beenquickly ushered off-stage. It’sduring this Twitter threadthat Vincke reveals almost everyone in the original meeting room for Baldur’s Gate 3 has since been let go.
While layoffs are nothing new for the games industry, this year has seen an almost unprecedented number, with the likes ofBioWare,CD Projekt Red, andBungieall having laid off hundreds of workers between them. We’ve also seen some incredibly famous studios shut down, most notablyEmbracer’s closure of Saints Row developer Volitionand Timesplitters developer Free Radical Design.
Some of the companies laying people off are absolutely huge too, with Fortnite developerEpic Games having laid off almost 900 workers back in September. Microsoft alsolaid off 10,000 employees earlier this year, reportedly affecting developers such as Bethesda, The Coalition, and Halo developer 343 Industries. There’s quiet hope that next year will be better, though there are also fears things could get much worse from here on out.
