More than a quarter of devs surveyed by GDC were laid off in the past two years, and half of them don’t have a new job
“Execs are throwing people overboard and expecting these scuttled ghost ships to keep making them infinite money”
More than a quarter of game developers responding to a new survey said they were laid off in the past two years.
This year’s annual State of the Game Industry survey, which is managed by the Game Developers Conference and surveys more than 2,300 games industry professionals around the world, asked its respondents a number of questions about layoffs.
According to the survey, 17% said they were laid off in the past 12 months, while another 11% said they were laid off during the 12 months before that, making for a total of 28%. When limited to just US respondents, that percentage increases to 33%.
The survey also notes that the total number of layoffs could be higher than the survey suggests, as some respondents could have been laid off more than once in the past two years.
Of those who said they had been laid off, around 48% of them said they hadn’t found a new job yet. This wasn’t exclusive to those recently let go, either – of those who were laid off 1-2 years ago, 36% said they were still looking for a new job.
Half of respondents said their current company (or the one they most recently worked for) conducted layoffs in the past 12 months, and while 47% said they didn’t anticipate future layoffs at their company in the next 12 months, 23% said they did and 30% weren’t sure.
When asked what they thought the reasons were for such widespread layoffs, a number of respondents gave their own theories (under anonymity).
“Leadership failed to see that the COVID-era boom was not permanent, [and the] company went on an acquisition spree before being acquired,” a senior programmer in India said. “Now, money is a lot tighter because the goldfish with the money want returns yesterday so they can funnel it into the current fad (genAI).”
“Executives who have never actually worked as a dev are pulling up the boards on their ships, throwing people overboard, and expecting these scuttled ghost ships to keep making them infinite money,” a former designer in New York said.
Meanwhile, the owner of an independent studio in Australia said: “We’re coming up towards launch, and if sales aren’t good enough, there’ll be layoffs.”
The situation also affects future developers, as seen by the responses of more than 100 educators who were also surveyed. 60% said they expected the current economic and industry climate to have an impact on how many of their students would get a job in the industry, while a further 27% said they’d already seen an impact. Only 2% said they didn’t foresee an impact.
“There aren’t any jobs,” one game design student in California responded to the survey. “Everyone’s getting fired. It’s fucked.”
Game developer Farhan Noor, who has been tracking industry job cuts since 2022, estimates that around 8,500 workers were laid off in 2022, 10,500 workers in 2023, 14,600 workers in 2024 and 5,300 workers in 2025.
