Video game journalists and developers often appear at odds with each other, but we share a common goal: a healthy industry with great games made by happy workers. Unfortunately, the end of 2023 saw some cracks appear, but I hope we can unite against our common enemy in 2024.
I got laid off in mid-December. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise because, a few days later,the contents of the Insomniac hack were releasedand every dev and journo was at DEFCON 1. A heated debate about the media’s purpose ensued. Should we ignore the information that is now public because it had been obtained illegally and ruined Insomniac’s marketing plans? Or should we report information of relevance to the public? An unthinkable discussion in any other industry. That the leak included personal employee data made a difference, but no sites linked to that information, but there was a lot of pertinent stuff there.
On December 6, it was reportedBungie laid off workers in October due to fears of a full Sony takeover. On December 20, stolen corporate documents revealed supposed plans for layoffs at Insomniac due to the need to cut costs amid ballooning triple-A budgets. All this paints a picture of Sony managing its first-party studios poorly, and it’s important it’s held to account. The discussion around the information’s legality clouded what should have been the issue: if Insomniac—a studio that makes banger after banger—isn’t even safe from layoffs, that’s important proof this industry is being run unsustainably.
These are just a microcosm of howhorrible a year 2023 was for the people who work in and adjacent to games. TimeSplitters and Haze studio Free Radical wasshut down by Embracer—along with other studios the group recklessly bought; thousands of devs industry-wide were laid off; and on the journalism side, Vice’s Waypoint was shuttered; The Washington Post’s Launcher closed; Gamurs saw a huge round of layoffs in March, and many others lost their jobs during the year. The games industry is making more money than ever, and plenty of gamers are reading about them, so why are so many people out of a job? It’s poor management chasing endless, unsustainable growth.
Gone are the days when it was enough to simply make a sturdy chair, sell it, and then make another. Now that chair needs a subscription service and in-app purchases, so it keeps making money for years after it’s sold. Companies have investors to repay, shareholders to give dividends to, and C-suite bonuses to award. It’s not enough to just turn a profit, the profit margin needs to keep getting bigger, no matter what.
The quest for higher profits is why so many game sites expanded massively after Elden Ring and Hogwarts Legacy. Guides on these titles drew huge numbers of clicks and many executives scaled up, hiring more staff assuming the boom would last forever. It didn’t. At a certain point, more bodies and higher output stop driving more clicks, and without a proper war chest to weather the coming lull, the crash comes. Does this come in the form of sacked execs and disgraced CEOs, or even reduced pay? Of course not. It’s the editors and writers doing the work who get laid off.
Covid lockdowns saw people ordered to stay at home with nothing to do other than play video games. Now that the world has opened up, people have ditched the butt indent in their sofa and gone outside to touch grass. The industry is still making a huge amount of money, but not as quickly as before. Growth is still there, but the lines on the charts aren’t as steep, so cuts need to be made to ensure profits don’t slow down too. Again, that doesn’t mean slashing CEO pay, but pruning dev positions. I don’t think it requires a business degree or decades of experience to know that these booms come and go, and the important thing is sustainable growth, but what do I know?
Enshrining remote work, regular pay rises, and protection against preventable layoffs will help us get a stable games industry where devs don’t have to move countries every time they change jobs. Additionally, a robust, experienced press capable of holding those in power to account and offering proper analysis and critique—just as we have with film, business, politics, and every other kind of journalism—is essential to keep the industry in check.
On December 31, we rang in the New Year with a corker of a tweet stating journalists follow inexperienced devs in the hope they’ll accidentally leak something. It could have furthered the divide between us, but fortunately, most people called it out for the BS it was. In 2024, let’s remember that while our jobs may differ, we’re working toward a shared goal, and our enemy isn’t each other.
