Following 2024’s massive wave of layoffs across the video game industry, one in 10 developers say they were among those cut from AAA studios and indie outlets alike.
According to the the Game Developers Conference‘s newly released “2025 State of the Game Industry” report, 11% of the 3,000 developers surveyed say they were laid off over the past 12 months.
Overall, 41% of game developers were impacted by layoffs this year, either by being laid off themselves or having cuts affect their teams, which is up from 35% the prior year. 58% of respondents expressed “some level of concern” more reductions are still to come this year.
Per the survey, “The top reason companies have given their employees for layoffs is restructuring (a general term for reorganizing a business to make it more profitable), followed by declining revenue and market shifts. That’s for those who even got an explanation: 19% of developers told us there was “no reason given” for any of their company’s layoffs.”
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Video game companies that enacted layoffs in 2024 included Microsoft (which acquired Activision Blizzard in 2023), Sony Interactive/PlayStation, Riot Games, Take-Two Interactive, EA, Epic Games, Ubisoft and more.
“Developers were also asked to share what they feel is responsible for the rise in layoffs,” the report says. “While many of them recognized that revenue and market shifts were part of the problem, they placed most of the blame on specific issues like Covid-era overexpansion, rising production costs, declining player interest, unrealistic expectations for the “next big hit,” and poor leadership and mismanagement.”
Among the other major findings in the survey was the increase in developers concerned about the effects of generative AI on the industry with 13% of developers saying it’s having a positive impact, down from 21% in 2023, and 30% of respondents saying it has had a negative impact (up 12%).
The report also touched on the growing interest in gaming in Hollywood on the heels of the success of Amazon’s “Fallout,” HBO’s “The Last of Us” and more video game adaptations, with 13% of developers saying their games are being (or have been) adapted into films, episodic shows or other media (up from 10% the previous year). When asking just those developers working at AAA studios, that answer rose to 36%.
(Pictured above: Activision’s “Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.”)