A new study sheds light on the scale of staff reduction across the Chinese games industry. The number of professionals employed by local companies fell by thousands last year.
Honor of Kings
According to a new report from the Gameshark (游鲨游戏圈) platform (spotted by GameLook), the number of games industry professionals in China has dropped from 280,736 in 2022 to 270,030 in 2023.
This is the reduction of more than 10.7k, but it is unclear how many people were laid off and how many left their jobs voluntarily.
The total could be even higher because the study only takes into account people under China’s social security system employed by 5,984 local companies. So there is no information about outsourcing studios and small indie developers without social security numbers.
Of that amount, over 2,100 entities reduced their workforce last year. Below are the companies with the biggest staff reductions:
- Tencent — 3,768 people;
- Bilibili — 1,133 people;
- Yonghang Technology — 583 people;
- IGG — 501 people;
- Yoozoo Games (Youzu Interactive) — 385 people;
- NetEase — 363 people;
- Garena — 265 people;
- Lilith Games — 238 people.
There were also over 1,700 companies that hired more people in 2023. The list includes esports organization KuaiShow Gaming (+330), Wuthering Waves developer Kuro Games (+206), and more.
The leader is miHoYo, which increased its workforce in China to almost 6,200 by adding 927 employees last year. According to analysts, the Genshin Impact developer’s global headcount could now exceed 7,000 people.
For comparison, there were over 10,500 layoffs in the games industry globally (via the Game Industry Layoffs project). Since the beginning of 2024, game companies have already cut over 11k jobs, with the largest layoffs occurring at Microsoft (1,900 people in January, plus recent studio closures), Unity (1,800), Sony Interactive Entertainment (900), Electronic Arts (670), and Take-Two Interactive (600).