Why Game Developers Keep Getting Laid Off

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Why do game developers keep getting laid off? Ummm, duh. It's not like they are going to trim the fat by laying of corporate executives.

One day, you get called into a meeting. The company has to cut costs and will be "reducing headcount." You—along with 20 other people—are no longer employed. This wasn't for incompetence, or negligence, or anything else that you could control. You did nothing wrong. Your name just happened to be on the wrong list at the wrong time.
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Makes sense. Have to keep on churning out games. Like actors, singers, contractors, etc. If there are no new project(s), everyone on the team are most likely going to be laid off.
 
I like how this thread shows as "Why Game Developers Keep Getting Laid" on the forum index.
 
I generally find that people that end up on these lists fall into two catergories. The first is that they aren't necessarily incompetent, but rather who out of the group of people on being considered for lay off don't cut the mustard and the other group are the folks that are the highest paid. Sometimes it's one or the other or a combination of the two, you are highly paid and yet aren't cutting the mustard. In the end, it's about cutting employee overhead since payrolls are the most expensive things on any budget line item. I know, capt. obvious.
 
Methadras said:
I generally find that people that end up on these lists fall into two catergories. The first is that they aren't necessarily incompetent, but rather who out of the group of people on being considered for lay off don't cut the mustard and the other group are the folks that are the highest paid. Sometimes it's one or the other or a combination of the two, you are highly paid and yet aren't cutting the mustard. In the end, it's about cutting employee overhead since payrolls are the most expensive things on any budget line item. I know, capt. obvious.
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Most expensive thing is the Marketing department and the advertising. That takes up most game budgets. It's like the publishers have turned game development into a China factory. Hire a bunch of people to create the game, churn out a game, spend 3x what you spent on development to advertise, release game, then fire as many people that got you there to "cut costs".
 
>News article asking why game developers being laid off left and right
>Bobby Kotick made 689 MILLION last year for his paycheck at Activision

Do we have to fucking ask?

Do we really, really, REALLY have to fucking ask?
 
No one asks this in the movie industry. It's obvious: project done, thanks for the profits, get out. The execs do it because they can.

It's like the airlines, they abuse pilots because they know there will always be a line of new people who want to get paid anything to fly. People grow up wanting to make games, not counting on becoming intellectual sweatshop peons.
 
ShamisOMally said:
>News article asking why game developers being laid off left and right
>Bobby Kotick made 689 MILLION last year for his paycheck at Activision

Do we have to fucking ask?

Do we really, really, REALLY have to fucking ask?
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It's time for the people with the mad gaming dev skillz to go indie, and for game fans to stop buying this McDonald's-level crap put out by these big companies.

You don't need a big publisher anymore, though the marketing is nice.
 
Game development sucks because everyone is contracted and gets laid off when their games are finished.

But I always read articles that programmers make tons of money and it is such a great job. So which one is it? I doubt we are just talking about artists and sound guys. Maybe more like working at EA sucks and working at Microsoft doesn't?
 
Unfortunately, it's rought to work as a game developer unless you work for a studio that churns out allot of stuff regularly. Back when the gaming industry was huge here in Dallas I knew a ton of people that worked in it. They basically would have a job for as long as it took to make a game and then once the project was over, if they made it through the whole thing they were cut loose. After that they always moved onto different companies, different contracts and different franchises.

I have to wonder how many people I knew still work in that industry.
 
ShamisOMally said:
>News article asking why game developers being laid off left and right
>Bobby Kotick made 689 MILLION last year for his paycheck at Activision

Do we have to fucking ask?

Do we really, really, REALLY have to fucking ask?
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$65 Million not $689 Million.
 
This is all I see

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This isn't new really, but it does suck because it isn't "Constant". Road construction (and related businesses) in the northern midwest lays off most of its employees each winter and hires pretty much all of them back the next spring... It is almost an abuse of the unemployment system.

Granted this is not nearly at organized or predictable and a completely different skill set industry but constant and regular layoffs happen in other industries...
 
I know this is a joke, but it's not to far off from the truth....at lest in EA's case.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/CjYEi4PEqF4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
 
Ashbringer said:
Did nothing wrong? Sure, that's why so many modern games are such crap for noob playing community. Games look great, but where's the gameplay?
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You can blame middle aged big wigs for that one quite often actually. I read an article a while ago about them pushing games to be more like "respectable" media like movies and such, things the old timers are used to and consider tasteful, this is why you see allot of games with movie-like visual flare and style but lacking in content, it's hard to tell a story in a game if you don't put it on rails and limit its scope (~creativity) so here we are.
 
Nature of the beast? Those above them make the shots and the developers many times have to do the best they can with the time given to them...
 
Ok devils advocate here. If somebody is specially hired for a specific project and said project has concluded, do you expect the company to pay the developer to come in and get paid to drink coffee? Project is done.

Having said this I agree that its crappy to lay somebody off like they do in the gaming industry but that's how the industry is mostly run. .
 
I for one think that layoffs are now the largest way that American employers actually fire people. They found firing people is just too damn hard. How many times do you hear of a company laying people off and hiring a ton of people at the same time? When a project winds down they use that as a chance to get rid of people. Now they may not be horrible employees but they just aren't very desirable either. If they were desirable then they would have easily been relocated to another project. Laying people off is perfect because legally its pretty hard to deal with I mean what is a court going to do order you to go bankrupt to pay employees you claim you do not need?

Also some jobs are just "seasonal" Lots of people in many industries get laid off and rehired over and over constantly. What they do is learn to save their money when the cash is coming in and then ride it out till production ramps up. When production does ramp up they are usually working tons of hours and get OT pay as well. Some of them also mix in another type of work. You can free lance etc... So the point is learn your industry and your own worth and make the best of it.

Don't cry me a river almost every career now days expects you to move every 3 years if you want any upward mobility.
 
fdiaz78 said:
Ok devils advocate here. If somebody is specially hired for a specific project and said project has concluded, do you expect the company to pay the developer to come in and get paid to drink coffee? Project is done.

Having said this I agree that its crappy to lay somebody off like they do in the gaming industry but that's how the industry is mostly run. .
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I can list five games in the last few months where they fired most of the dev's after the project was done and the games fucking crashed and burned because companies didn't have enough programmers on hand to fix game bugs at a decent pace, which killed said games

Hell, fucking Wolfenstein was released what, few weeks ago? Watch Dogs was released last week? Both studios have had a shitload of layoffs, and the games are still a fucking mess
 
"Congratulations on a truly exceptional job team! You really put one hell of a product out for the masses, the whole company going to reap the rewards! I'm so proud to work with each and every one of you. Pick up your celebratory pink slips at the front desk."
 
Staples said:
Game development sucks because everyone is contracted and gets laid off when their games are finished.

But I always read articles that programmers make tons of money and it is such a great job. So which one is it? I doubt we are just talking about artists and sound guys. Maybe more like working at EA sucks and working at Microsoft doesn't?
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Id say programmers in the game industry are a very, very small minority in the profession. And from the article, it sounds like EA is one of the lesser evils out of the bunch. At least they tried to get those laid off people other jobs....which is more than most companies do.
 
I know folks on this board seem to dislike kickstarter and steam early access but this is one reason I support projects in both systems ... The big company mentality and publisher models are always going to favor models with high churn ... At least with these self funding models the small companies or small independent teams have a better shot at obtaining the funding to make good projects and try to break out of these layoff cycles ... These prefunding models also help establish a baseline demand so that small and mid size audience projects become attractive again and help leverage the gamers who support the projects as part of their marketing strategy ;)
 
dandirk said:
This isn't new really, but it does suck because it isn't "Constant". Road construction (and related businesses) in the northern midwest lays off most of its employees each winter and hires pretty much all of them back the next spring... It is almost an abuse of the unemployment system.

Granted this is not nearly at organized or predictable and a completely different skill set industry but constant and regular layoffs happen in other industries...
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It really depends on the region. Weather can effect construction jobs and firms basically close up and are seasonal. (like the north east). They employees know they are not really fired so it is kinda different.

Project based employment in on the rise in the US simply because their is a surplus of talent and it is a cost effective. I am fond of indie games, the main problem is simply one failed/slow game and they end up folding or being bought out etc. Heck even very sucessful firms eventually get tempted to sell. Bioware and blizzard are good examples. Firms with hit after hit and still they sold the shop.
 
I love programming, and I love games, but the high churn in game development is a big reason why I'm not even going to attempt a career in game development, and instead work on office software.
 
There's no point in keeping fat (the developers) when the game is complete. This is why develoeprs get cut so quickly but the operations folks tend to stick around.
 
The game publishers need to move to a pricing model that offers patches and updates as DLC-style paid content rather than giving away fixes for free. That would make it possible to not only continue updating games and fixing bugs, but also it might help to keep more developers working during the game's on-market lifecycle.
 
dandirk said:
This isn't new really, but it does suck because it isn't "Constant". Road construction (and related businesses) in the northern midwest lays off most of its employees each winter and hires pretty much all of them back the next spring... It is almost an abuse of the unemployment system.

Granted this is not nearly at organized or predictable and a completely different skill set industry but constant and regular layoffs happen in other industries...
Click to expand...

Happens all the time to my friends that work for Wal-Mart and Target distribution centers. When they prep for the holiday season, they have tons of people on board and a lot of overtime. The rest of the year its basically rotating layoffs for weeks to a month at a time.

The same happens to my wife at the restaurant where she works. During their slow season they cut back on kitchen staff.

I don't know that it is necessarily an abuse of the unemployment system. It is just traditional seasonal unemployment, like when all of the migrant farm workers return to their various countries of origin every winter, except they still have to budget the old-fashioned way, and live on what they save up during the productive working season.

I would imagine that the good artists, developers, programmers, etc. get picked up for other projects more often than not, though perhaps some more data gathering/statistical analysis on that would be helpful. The rest do what most people do in today's economy - they move on to the next available position where they will get paid less and abused more, but at least they have a job...
 
Steve said:
Why do game developers keep getting laid off? Ummm, duh. It's not like they are going to trim the fat by laying off corporate douchebags.
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fixed that for you Steve

Douchebags stick together. Even if they can't trust each other they at least know how each other thinks and will support each other so they all can keep being douchebags.
 
fdiaz78 said:
Ok devils advocate here. If somebody is specially hired for a specific project and said project has concluded, do you expect the company to pay the developer to come in and get paid to drink coffee? Project is done.

Having said this I agree that its crappy to lay somebody off like they do in the gaming industry but that's how the industry is mostly run. .
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It's exactly how I've made my living the past 10+ years as a self-employed web designer, so these folks get little sympathy from me.
 
This is also part of the problem.
Companies are too quick to cut the team and don't alpha/ beta test long enough.
Things go bad and there's no one there to fix it, all the while the CEOs rake in the big bucks.
 
Staples said:
Game development sucks because everyone is contracted and gets laid off when their games are finished.

But I always read articles that programmers make tons of money and it is such a great job. So which one is it? I doubt we are just talking about artists and sound guys. Maybe more like working at EA sucks and working at Microsoft doesn't?
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"Programmers" do not make tons of money. It's a vanishing job description. Software engineers make money, and not at EA.
 
Aluisious said:
No one asks this in the movie industry. It's obvious: project done, thanks for the profits, get out. The execs do it because they can.

It's like the airlines, they abuse pilots because they know there will always be a line of new people who want to get paid anything to fly. People grow up wanting to make games, not counting on becoming intellectual sweatshop peons.
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It's the fantasy of having a particular job in a particular industry, not realizing what goes on in the actual industry until you are in it. It's an outsiders view.
 
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