Series on why gaming layoffs have been happening

Part 5, the Finale – “But why now?”
Thank you for reading this series on why gaming layoffs have been happening.

You might have noticed me shouting out the local union and recruiters in past posts.
This is because there’s no place like home.
Finland is a great home for Game Development.
The culture of sharing and the work-life balance are like no other, and it’s no surprise there are amazing companies here like Rovio Entertainment Corporation, Futureplay Games, Cosmic Lounge, and Supercell.
Talk to cool people like Oleg Paliy and Juan Fernandez Castellano – they might know how to help you if you’re curious.

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So we talked about the ever-present trends that lead to layoffs…
(Part 1) It’s not AI causing job losses but the lack of R&D and new games.
(Part 2) Game projects inevitably die out without that R&D, leading to inevitable layoffs if companies don’t know how to restructure their talent.
(Part 3) The Great Gaming Singularity of strategic M&As is only raising the bar for new projects, buying out competitors or pricing them out – leaving less room in the market for new teams to create that needed R&D innovation.
(Part 4) And this is in part because the industry is maturing, leading us to believe things are more predictable than ever, leaving the doors open to these phenomena.

But why has it gotten so much worse lately?
None of this will come as a surprise, but it is surprising how it all happened at once.

COVID increased player time and downloads, which in turn gave the industry a nice bump in revenues.
We hired.
Apple’s privacy policies came in, confusing at first so we needed experts and new training.
We hired.
Increased competitiveness never stopped, in fact, a lot of major hits were booming in 2022. Especially off of the backs of that increased revenue from 2020 onwards…
We hired.

But then, lockdowns ended, the temporary revenue bump ended.
Reality hit.
Now, with new privacy policies, we can’t measure growth 100% deterministically.
Predictions became more conservative. Finance departments started to develop more liquidity – which prompted marketing departments to lower spend.

In fact, some companies even claimed that it was a great time to shift money from new games to older, as releasing games was now “unsustainable” – which, stacked on top of the increased competitiveness just priced out a lot of projects out of the market.

Simultaneously, interest rates raised – investment and loans dried up, exacerbating things.
And conversely, we’re seeing the consumer wallets being impacted by these factors, prompting games to monetize smarter.
Not to mention that download growth isn’t as fast as we got used to.

Layoffs were inevitable. Especially now.

I hope we learn from this, this time.
We should be protecting our people in this industry.
There are so many talented people out there, and we can find new (AI or not) jobs for them all somehow.

Thanks for the kind messages and for reading along!
Cheers,