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Why the Bloodletting is Occurring with Video Game Developer Layoffs
Binge and purge
I worked for Epic Games until 2014 — they laid off 700 people a few months ago. However, the layoffs among video game developers did not stop — it seems like every month a game studio is letting more people go.
Last week Microsoft landed a haymaker to the already reeling video game employee market — the company slashed over 1900 staff — just a short while after the merger with Activision-Blizzard.
What’s the problem here — why is this all happening? From my time in the video game world I started putting together the pieces and these are my assumptions.
Redundant Headcount
Microsoft gobbled up two huge game devs in two years — Bethesda was acquired in March of 2021 and it finalized it’s merger in October of 2023. These companies probably had similar employees in the same positions as their Microsoft counterparts.
Usually in these situations the parent company punts the staffer from the merged company in the duplicate position. Or possibly the staff in the two locations can’t work together — then the chopping block is set up and the employees that can’t work together are given their walking papers.
