#games industry

[devsgames]

Just this week in games:

- EA laid off 700 workers

- Sony laid of 900 workers

- Rockstar announces in-person work mandates for all employees (a 'soft layoff' that will force some staff to quit, which likely means that actual layoffs are forthcoming)

In 2023 6,000 games workers were laid off. Now in 2024 over 10,000 workers have been laid off, and there's still 10 months to go.

Not to be hyperbolic, but I think this is perhaps the worst year for video games ever if we're measuring by number of layoffs.

#gamedev #game development #game dev #gamedevelopment #game industry #games industry #sony #playstation #rockstar #rockstar games #ea #ea games

[ayeforscotland]

The games industry is fucking doomed at this rate. This is an INSANE direction to take Subnautica, the amazing single-player survival game.

#ayeforscotland #subnautica #games industry

[ohnoitstbskyen]

So, considering what's going on with Riot right now, do you think Arcane Season 2 got caught up in all of this restructuring?

Yes and no. Arcane season 2 is part of the reason for the restructuring.

As I understand it, internally at Riot, after Arcane was a huge (and more importantly: prestigious!) success, the decision was made to basically hand the entirety of the game's lore and story over to the Entertainment division within Riot. These are the people in large part responsible for projects like Arcane, K/DA, Heartsteel, that animated series China got, all that sort of thing.

The writers at Riot were basically told to flat out stop producing new content and lore for the game - that's why there's BEEN no new story content for League for over a year - because everything was going to be consolidated under the Entertainment division from now on. This is why Riot started talking about "One Runeterra" and "Arcane is going to be canon" and so on.

The success of Arcane convinced executives that what League of Legends needs is a singular cohesive brand with its most successful public property leading the charge, Arcane is going to be the gateway drug, the hook on the end of the line that brings new players and new paying customers into the exciting world of the League of Legends multimedia IP universe!

Nevermind that Arcane's story and worldbuilding is fundamentally incompatible with >checks notes< the overwhelming majority of Runeterra as it exists and enormous compromises would have to be made to either the world of Runeterra or Arcane itself to make it work. Arcane is the big shiny prestigious mainstream Emmy-award winning project that every executive wants to put their name next to, and like companies Pivoting To Video in 2015 because Facebook showed them inflated viewership stats, Riot Games is Pivoting To Arcane. It's better than them pivoting to crypto and NFTs, at least, although I know for a fact that high ranking people at Riot tried to make that happen too.

Now, the primary cause for all of these games industry layoffs is that interest rates aren't zero anymore. Borrowing money isn't free, the curve of constant growth has ever so slightly slowed, taking on debt is becoming a little tiny bit more risky than it was previously, and corporations are responding to this with massive rounds of layoffs and constriction to show "financial responsibility" and prove to shareholders that they are prioritizing core growth strategies and blah blah blah etc. They're also trying to kneecap the growing labor movement in the games industry and exert downwards pressure on wages, but the interest rates seem to have been the main thing.

In Riot's particular case, a secondary reason is they want to pivot the focus of the company to support their One Runeterra pipe dream, so a lot of the people who got fired at Riot are writers, artists, creative leads and sometimes extremely senior and successful staff who are now surplus to requirements. This is also why Riot shut down Riot Forge in the same round of layoffs - can't have a bunch of talented indie devs going off making video games that don't adhere to the new One Runeterra policy. What if someone played Mageseeker and got confused how there can be mages all over Demacia but somehow there are no mages in Arcane's Piltover and Zaun. That's a plot hole! People write snarky articles about that sort of thing. It turns off new consumers! What if Cinema Sins makes a video making fun of it?!?

So yeah. A bunch of cocaine-addled fame hungry executive vultures at Riot are absolutely gagging on their own d*cks to put their name next to Arcane related projects, and since they were going to be screwing hundreds of people out of their careers, healthcare, and in some cases their fucking visa status anyway, it seems to have presented a nice opportunity to clear the board for their latest Visionary Scheme for the company IP.

That is as I understand the situation, anyway. I'm a bitter old man and most of what I hear is second hand and anonymous gossip through my social networks, take what I say with a grain of salt, but I've followed this company for (oh god) twelve years now and I have developed a tragically keen understanding of how its executive class operates.

#league of legends #riot games #arcane #arcane season 2 #runeterra #games industry #layoffs

[neverwhere]

✨ HUGE NEWS ✨

I’m excited to announce my co-workers and I are unionizing!

You can find our full mission statement here on our official Twitter account - please signal boost and share with the hashtag #UnionizeSega 💪🦔

You can share articles on Polygon, Kotaku, The Verge and more, reblog this post, tell your friends, help us get the word out - we are the biggest video game studio yet to organize a union, and the only one across multiple departments! Hopefully this will have nothing but positive repercussions for the industry.

Please help support us as we attempt to make the incredible company we love an amazing place to work for everyone 💙

#video games #sega #unionizesega #games industry #signal boost #gaming #comrade sonic says seize the means of production #for better pay and benefits for all! #i love this company so so much #please help us get it to love us back

[dragoneer99]

the video game industry should be the easiest industry in the world to boycott because you literally DO NOT NEED new videogames. you will not curl up and die if you don't drop 80$ for a fucking preorder or 60$ on release.

You don't HAVE to buy the game. But the consistent cycle is just: Article drops revealing massive labor abuse and disgusting exploitation in game company -> game company releases new game anyway to generate hype -> thousands of people buy it at full price and then whine on twitter if you remind them what the company did.

Blizzard gets sued, and we find out a woman was sexually harassed so much she committed suicide, but then overwatch 2 drops and I guess everyone let their moral backbones slough out their assholes and spent full fucking price so Blizzard learned nothing.

Bethesda harasses a transgender employee and holds her god damn healthcare hostage to keep her from talking about it, but then Starfield drops and suddenly everybody HAS to drop 60$ stop being such a joyless communist!!!!!!!1!!1!

idk man it should be easy to just. not buy the game.

#games industry #this rlly shouldn't be difficult

[gamesindustrynormal]

I have had bad interview experiences where communication took forever, was dropped, where the people I talked to changed and gave me incorrect information... You name it. Now, my stance is pretty firmly "we make our first impression as a team when we reach out to the candidate, not when they are being hired and onboarded for the role". We can't be dismissive of someone until they have gone through the gauntlet of interviews.

But even trying to go the extra mile you are often a victim of circumstances - you have several candidates and you want to make sure to evaluate them fairly, but one of them is dragging their feet getting back to you. One of your critical interviewers is suddenly out sick. The Talent Acquisition agent handling the req left their job and the person filling in has to be onboarded while filling their responsibilities for some other team. Priorities of the team shifted what the role you are hiring for is about.

Job hunting is stressful, just waiting to get a response can be a nightmare at the best of times. A few things you can do as an applicant though;

Always ask when you can expect to hear back unless the next interaction is already scheduled. Ask the interviewers, if you can't ask them, ask the recruiter via email. If they fail to meet the deadline that doesn't necessarily mean anything bad, but it gives you a good excuse to reach out yourself without the risk of being annoying.

Having deadlines is normal. Many people have competing offers that they need to respond to. If you have a deadline, inform the recruiter about it - they will likely try to work around your schedule. Like, don't lie about it to make yourself seem desirable or hurry them into a decision, it can backfire. But if you don't let them know about your deadline they might drag their feet to solve some other timing issue.

Interviewers typically leave you some time to ask your own questions at the end of a loop, sometimes the time you are given is not enough or maybe you couldn't think of anything in the moment. It is a good idea to come prepared, but if you realize after the fact that there was something you wanted to ask about - reach out to the recruiter and ask them to forward the question to the interviewer. They might not be able to help, but they typically don't mind trying.

Now, I can't speak for other industries, but in the games industry we typically have a lot of applications for every position. Getting to the interview stage means the team has taken an interest and the interviewers have a positive opinion of you - you do not need to be concerned with bothering them. In fact, taking an interest in them and being responsible with people's time is a sign of professional maturity that most hiring managers like to see.

#gamesindustrynormal #job hunting #job interview #games industry

[systemdeez]

I think we need to bring back calling people fake gamers, but instead of directing it at any woman who plays video games, it should be directed at people who almost exclusively play the insanely high budget AAA skitter box crap and turn their noses up at everything else. These people calling themselves gamers are like if Marvel fans called themselves film buffs.

#gaming #indie games #games industry #I hate gamers #this post is about playstation fans specifically by the way

[ineffectualdemon]

I don't want the cost of my entertainment to be broken people

#this should not even be a question #crunch #abuse in the system #content creators destroying their mental health in pursuit of the algorithm #the idea that creation has to be constant and fast #i hate it #give people the time they need to create and the money they need to survive while they do #entertainment #entertainment industry #games industry #content creation #youtube

[andreablythe]

Among the multitude of amazing talks at GDC 2024 , one of my faves is a talk by Jordan Magnuson about how poetry can help designers make better games. It was incredibly insightful, so I wrote up some of the lessons I took away from his talk.

#gdc #gdc 2024 #games industry #indie games #games writing #game writing #game design #game dev #writing #games #game development #indiegame #game developers #poetry #writers and poets #poets on tumblr #games poetry

[earlgraytay]

hey, game devs of Tumblr: has anyone worked with a recruiter called Somnus Collective?

They gave me a nibble on social media, I reached out to them, and they seem... ah... very enthusiastic. And I can't find anything about them online, despite them claiming to have some very large clients.

A recruiter is probably my best shot at getting an industry job rn, but are these guys legit or am I about to get scammed?

#somnus collective #game dev #gamedev #game development #games industry #indie game dev #game design

[devsgames]

I'm sorry but for people who cheer on mass game industry layoffs because they think it's some kind of upheaval that is going to "topple the AAA industry" or "teach them a lesson": I hate to break it to you but AAA studios have a metric shitload of money and despite what their press releases say, they really aren't hurting as much as they'd have you think right now. Thousands of jobs lost is a temporary setback to them; if it was actually a last resort move they wouldn't have all simultaneously put themselves in a position where they had to do it in the first place. These studios have been around for decades and will continue to be around, and they will continue to operate just as they have for the last thirty years because they have huge vaults and no morals. They aren't learning a lesson from this because most of them saw it coming but would never admit that.

Know who is being permanently impacted by games layoffs?

It's the indie studio making sick ass games you'll never get to play because they laid everyone off when a publisher tried to save money by pulling all their funding. The hundreds of workers who woke up one morning and found out they suddenly have no job to put food on the table for their children. The international workers who were let go from the job that supplies their visa that helps them stay in the country. The thousands of students who now have to compete over a pool of a dozen job openings, who will work in studios where all the senior staff and leadership who would normally be there to help mentor them into their roles were fired. The disabled workers who now no longer have health or insurance coverage for their survival. The workers who didn't get laid off but survived to see all their friends and coworkers lose their livelihoods for completely arbitrary reasons and whose morale has all but been completely obliterated. The workers in the Global South working for outsourcing companies who were relying on cancelled projects from AAA studios to put food on their tables.

So whenever you're inclined to assume that the suffering of workers is somehow teaching rich people a lesson, remember that no, it doesn't actually and almost never will. All it does is teach thousands of talented workers in the video game industry that games were never - and will never - be worth it.

#anyway organize your workplace #some of y'all simply do not understand how these things work and it shows #gamedev #game development #game dev #gamedevelopment #game industry #games industry #layoffs #video games #blog #thoughts

[ayeforscotland]

In 25 days of 2024, the games industry has passed half the number of total layoffs than there were in 2023.

Really worrying time as I’ll be losing my job at the end of February when we launch the game and work dries up.

Complete failure from industry leaders, all for money-hungry executives.

#ayeforscotland #games industry

[iww-gnv]

The seemingly endless litany of layoffs that's plagued the game industry through 2023 and into 2024 continued today as two more studios have confirmed cuts to their workforces: Dead by Daylight developer Behaviour Interactive has let 40 employees go, while Lord of the Fallen publisher CI Games has reduced its workforce by 10%.

#news #gaming industry #games industry #layoffs

[turianhumanclient]

Continuing monitoring of Zaum Studio OÜ, creators of Disco Elysium and associated company entities

Kaur Kender's spree of founding companies in Estonia and UK continues, now also starring his little brother Heiti (owns two Apple retail stores with Margus Linnamäe money invested into them) and mutual businessman friend of theirs Mihkel Oja (Worked at the bank Tõnis Haavel founded).

#disco elysium #zaum #studio zaum #za/um #studio za/um #kaur kender #heiti kender #mihkel oja #tõnis haavel #tonis haavel #denis haavel #margus linnamäe #pc games #game development #games industry #video games industry

[unverified-mawa]

My electrolysis technician has a trans daughter, and it's so sweet seeing a supportive and adoring parent talk about their trans child.

If you're a trans person and your parents were always supportive of you, please take some time to remind them how much you love them.

If you also make furry art and are considering working in the games industry, you should know your poor, innocent mother showed me some of your furry art and I could barely maintain a poker face.

My professional advice to you as an industry game developer is that "you should expand your portfolio to include a wide range of artistic styles" when you come back from seeing your long distance partner :)

#furry art #game developers #tumblr #sfw furry #furry fandom #advice #games industry #gamedev #game development #trans #transgender #transgirl #transfem #unprofessionally though #teeheeheehee #was very funny #and I did not snitch

[gamesindustrynormal]

A few things I notice about people writing resumes for entry-level jobs in the games industry...

"resume" is a very popular filename and it is super annoying to have to rename them so you can find them later. firstname_lastname_discipline is the gold standard.

A lot of people put links to their github or online portfolio in the resume these days, which is great. Sure, you can't use it if you print the resume but it has mostly outlived its usefulness at that point.

pdf files are faster to open, smaller and more portable than word documents.

People really don't tailor their resume to the position they are applying for. And I get it, every entry-level job has hundreds of applicants so you need to go wide. But if you are applying to write client engine code all those paragraphs about webpages and databases are a waste.

for entry-level jobs, no-one has enough relevant experience to take up more than one page. Some write more pages anyway.

Job descriptions tend to have "required" and "nice to have" skills. Not always labeled as such, which admittedly is on us - we should be more clear. And some applicants do not seem to realize that if their resume does not indicate that they have all the required skills it will probably not be considered.

A good entry-level resume will have a mix of group projects, personal experiments and a list of skills. Potentially also coursework and/or professional experience. If it is just one or two of those things it tends to feel like something is missing.

... Admittedly everyone has their own preferences, so maybe following the advice of some anon of tumblr isn't the way to go. And if I am being honest, even I wouldn't reject someone for uploading a 3-page "resume.doc".

But of the hundreds I read only a few present relevant information in a clear way about whether the candidate could do the job or not. So I am going to complain about it =P

#games industry #job hunting #resume #aaa games #gamesindustrynormal