It's been an incredibly tough year for the industry so far with mass layoffs across multiple studios. Sony yesterday added to this - announcing it was axing 900 jobs, and now on top of this another developer has had to make a "difficult decision".
Deck Nine Games (The Expanse: A Telltale Series, Life is Strange: True Colors) shared a statement revealing it's been "affected by the game's industry worsening market" and has let go of "20%" of its staff. Here's the message in full:
Deck Nine Games: "Like many others in the games industry right now, Deck Nine has been affected by the game industry's worsening market conditions. Today we made the difficult decision to lay off 20% of our staff. These people are amazing, talented, and awesome developers. They have made a huge impact during out time at Deck Nine Games and we did not take this decision lightly. Please hire these people if you can, they're amazing."
One other developer also undergoing a structural reorganisation right now is the team behind The Quarry, Supermassive. These latest layoffs follow on from companies like Microsoft and Riot Games' own mass layoffs earlier this year.
If we hear any significant developments, we'll let you know. What are your own thoughts about this? Tell us below.
Comments 11
I am dumbfounded by these claims of "worsening market conditions". The main reasons for these cuts are drop in profit margins. Meaning they're still making money, just not enough.
Shame, I really enjoyed playing The Expanse recently. As a fan of the TV show, I felt this was a really good experience.
I still don’t get all these layoffs. 2023 was an amazing year for games, and 2024 is off to a great start. What am I missing?
@BRT15 It's not as simple as that. Xbox lost $440 million last quarter, PlayStation made less than 6% return on Sales. If they don't do better investment will go elsewhere. Less investment will mean cancelled projects and even more job losses. Changes are done thinking about the 92% that remain, rather than the 8% that were fired. They need to be sustainable.
@Nightcrawler71 It's a fair question, there are a lot of reasons:
At the end of the day companies need to be sustainable, too large and you will get through your cash reserves too quickly, before you release your next game you will run out. With costs spiralling cuts need to be made. Hard on anyone affected but bosses have to think of those that remain. It's not as simple as chasing higher profits.
Gaming is literally gone crazy lately stop overspending on game budgets for average games and the whole resolution fps arguments from people fuel this stuff like nothing is worth playing unless it's 60fps and 4k the industry will collapse again if all this doesn't stop
@Nightcrawler71 Still wasn't good enough they expect to constantly make more and more profits and if not somebody has to go to save the money they need it's the world look at energy companies we are going tru an energy crisis/ cost of living crisis but they all are making record profits money is all that matters
I know profits need to be had and it's clearly not rising for plenty of publisher's and development studios currently but I like to imagine that with GTA 6 coming out soon, it is one of the main reason why the gaming industry is having mass layoffs because a very very very high percentage of gamers will be playing nothing else but the latest grand theft auto game, plenty of people won't even bat an eye lid to any other game once it comes out for a very long time, it will leave a lot of studios/publishers in the dust or maybe even leading them to close down so they maybe getting prepared for that if push comes to shove.
@themightyant All good points. It just seems unfair/surprising when for example a dev like Insomniac has a huge hit with Spider-Man 2, and then has to lay off staff.
@eire-shabba I think this is big, and we will see a drop off in big, cutting edge technology games in the next couple years.
But I think that another part of this is that the gaming industry has just gotten too big. I don't know a single person that has kept up with even the most popular games that came out last year. The amount of people who have time to play Zelda and Hogwarts Legacy and Baldur's Gate 3 and Spiderman 2 and anything else is not enough to support the costs. Even in online places like this, where you have a bunch of people who probably play way more than the average person, everyone talks about having a giant backlog that they can't keep up with.
@Nightcrawler71 It is unfair, but life, and business has never been fair. People get handed their notice everyday through no fault of their own. But companies have to constantly adjust to match the current economic conditions else they risk long term failure.
The market is over-saturated and has been for a few years. We've all got backlogs of great games that we can't get to. Great for gamers at this moment, but terrible for the developers. There is going to be a big reduction in big budget games going forward IMO.
@InvaderFromSpace Your 100% right I played none of those games myself and my own backlog is huge without even mentioning games on gamepass and I don't really buy to many games but do get a few every summer during sales and obviously Christmas but I rarely buy full price games unless I really want to play them hopefully the tech will slow down I'm sick of the constant crap about resolution and frame rate like lives depend on it anything under 60fps or 4k is a crime against humanity
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