The scale of video game industry layoffs is massive, as thousands of people continue to lose their jobs every month. February 2024 was, unfortunately, no exception, with game companies cutting at least 2,027 jobs.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
This is according to the Game Industry Layoffs project, which tracks layoffs across game developers and publishers globally.
For comparison, about 386 people were laid off in February 2023 — 5x less than last month. But it is worth noting that the actual numbers could be even higher, since not all game companies publicly disclose the extent of job cuts. So it is unclear how many people were affected by the recent layoffs at Cloud Imperium Games, or how many employees were laid off following the closure of 505 Games offices in Germany, Spain, and France.
Below are the largest publicly announced job cuts in February 2024:
- Sony Interactive Entertainment — 900 people, including the closure of London Studio and cuts at Naughty Dog, Insomniac Games, and Guerrilla Games;
- Electronic Arts — 670 people (the second round of layoffs in the past 12 month, in addition to last year’s 775 job cuts);
- Wildlife Studios (mobile developer) — 130 people;
- Supermassive Games — 90 people;
- Hidden Path Entertainment — 44 people, also freezing the development of a Dungeons & Dragons RPG.
In addition, layoffs were conducted at Scopely, 91Act (the studio’s CEO started rehiring staff following the success of BlazBlue Entropy Effect), Deck Nine Games, Blackbird Interactive, Build a Rocket Boy, Daybreak Games, and more.
In January 2024, nearly 6,000 games industry professionals were laid off, including 1,900 at Microsoft’s gaming divisions, about 530 at Riot Games, 1,800 at Unity, and 97 at Eidos Montreal. This brings this year’s total to over 8,000. Given that game companies cut at least 10,500 people last year, 2024 could soon surpass 2023 in the number of layoffs.