No Escape

Digital Culture and its Discontents

It Hasn’t Been A “Good Year” for Games

Kaile Hultner

UPDATE: A friend sent me a link to this website which has been keeping an even more granular account of games layoffs and studio closures. By this site’s count, there have been roughly 107 different layoffs and closures this year, with over 6,000 people fired in the past ten months. So, you know. It’s fun times. Anyway, shoutouts to Game Industry Layoffs for doing this important, gruesome work, and thank you to Game Developer for the reporting used to create my initial list.

It’s October, which means we’re already sliding headfirst into GOTY season. I imagine for many, that award has been hard-locked on The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom since April. For others, Baldur’s Gate III has taken the top slot and doesn’t look like it’s going to be unseated. For the 15 mech sickos out there, Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon has stolen their hearts, and for a treat they just got a little side-helping of Front Mission 2. (It might be me, I’m “they.”) If you’re a remake fiend, The Witcher 3, Resident Evil 4, Metroid Prime Remastered, Quake II, Ghost Trick, Persona 4 Golden, and even The Making of Karateka all came out (again) this year to solid acclaim.

No Escape has never done GOTY lists, and we never will. Ranking games into the same old configurations of “Massive Triple-A tentpole > breakout indie darling > everything else” year over year has never made sense to me, and the practice has honestly always seemed a little bit like games media agreeing to enforce the hegemony of the biggest studios. Even when it comes to the ways in which some outlets write about “the best indie games,” for example, it always feels like folks primarily celebrate the most popular hits. I’m not perfect, of course; even if I don’t write those articles, I’ll still sneak a cheeky peek at a piece or two, especially if there’s a particularly well-written critical blurb in them.

This year, however… the vibes are off, man. The prospect of even paying lip service to the concept of the GOTY feels bad, wrapped up as it is in the ways the industry (chiefly, the executives who “run” things) has mistreated its workers. Compounding this is this persistent idea I’ve had that some aspects of this industry are counting on us – consumers, media, etc. – becoming more ignorant about game development as time goes on. I see this evidenced in the “populist” screeds of people who claim to be pro-consumer saying shit like “I don’t need to know how games are made” as they’re arguing that games should be made “better.” In that light, what’s there to celebrate?

There are a bunch of folks out there right now who are like, “oh, shit’s not that bad, stop being hyperbolic and let yourself celebrate the good things that happened in video games this year.” That’s why we’ve compiled a list of all the layoffs in 2023 in reverse chronological order, to be updated as each new one occurs (h/t Game Developer).

Since January, at least 4,061 people have been fired in the games industry.

The number is absolutely higher, as 29 of these entries represented either whole studio closures or an unspecified number of people losing their jobs. What are we really celebrating when we say this year was a “good year” for games, only paying attention to the end products and not their production processes? Nothing less than the erasure and dehumanization of the people who make them. This is not a problem you can solve through consumption. Many of these stories are full of details like “X company posted excellent third-quarter results before the layoffs,” and people are still losing their jobs. Developers need to unionize, and we need to support developers however we can. This includes rejecting mindless marketing jerk-off sessions like The Game Awards, donating to organizing efforts, and making an effort to learn about the process of making video games so we can understand more fully what is being lost every time a mass layoff like any on this list occurs. It’s only through solidarity, mutual aid and breaking out of the mindset that we don’t need to know how the sausage is made that any of us – developers, critics, players – have a chance against these life-ruining corporate behemoths.

References

References
↑1 I’m including this entry though not adding it to the final count because Microsoft is a general-purpose technology company and not just a company that makes games or game hardware. This might seem like a distinction without a difference, but we’re trying to be accurate here.
↑2 One particularly affecting aspect of these specific layoffs is that team leads tasked with making some of the cuts chose to fire themselves instead. Shit goes unexpectedly hard. From the article: “The leads on my team were given swords and chose to fall on them, laying themselves off instead of choosing among the rest of us,” (Narrative Designer Elizabeth Ballou) added. “I’ve never seen anyone in games do something that metal and I hope I never have to again.”
↑3 including this entry but not adding it to the final count.
↑4 including this entry but not adding to final count.
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