January 2024 logged 33 separate layoff announcements in the video game business. February added 26 more. After that, no month passed 18.
Those counts come from publicly reported cases compiled by GameDev Reports. By its tally, 14,600 people in games lost their jobs in 2024, up 39% from 10,500 in 2023 and well above the 8,500 recorded in 2022. The biggest single cuts that year were at Microsoft (2,800 people), Unity (1,800) and Sony (1,339). The real total is probably higher, since the figures only cover cuts that were made public.
From pandemic boom to cutbacks
The wave began in 2022 and peaked in January 2024. One estimate puts the losses at about 45,000 jobs between 2022 and July 2025.
The cause traces back to lockdowns. Demand for games jumped in 2020, and publishers spent heavily on acquisitions, mergers and new hires, expecting the growth to last. It did not. As the world reopened and spending returned to pre-pandemic habits, companies were left with costs they could not carry.
The first layoffs were mostly in China and Russia. Chinese studios were hit by a freeze on game licensing, and Russian ones by the invasion of Ukraine. North America and Europe followed from 2023, and California alone accounted for half of all layoffs.
Who cut, and what went with them
Embracer Group, Unity, Microsoft Gaming, Electronic Arts, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Epic Games, Take-Two, Ubisoft, Sega and Riot Games all made major cuts. Games were cancelled. Studios were closed or sold off by their parents. More than 30 development studios let their entire staff go and shut down, among them BioWare, Monolith Productions, Arkane Austin and Volition.
Embracer announced the cancellation of 29 titles. Microsoft scrapped Odyssey, a Blizzard project in development for over six years, and laid off some of the people who had worked on it. Ubisoft dropped three unannounced games in January 2023, pointing to poor results the previous quarter.
Rising budgets were part of the squeeze. According to a report cited by the UK Competition and Markets Authority, big-name releases that once cost $50 million to $150 million were running at $200 million or more for 2024 and 2025, and Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto were said to be above $250 million and $300 million. A slower economy in 2024 and higher interest rates made funding harder to find.
Some new studios never shipped anything. Ridgeline Games, founded in 2021, was shut down by EA on February 29, 2024. Deviation Games closed on March 1, 2024, four years after it opened.
A survey published later by the Game Developers Conference found that 33% of American industry workers had been laid off in the previous two years. Epic Games chief executive Tim Sweeney told Edge magazine it was the worst downturn the industry had seen since the 1983 crash.
Sources
- 2022–2026 video game industry layoffs – Wikipedia
- Game Industry Layoffs Surge 39% in 2024 | Sunny Wang posted on the topic | LinkedIn
