The videogame industry continues to get hit with mass layoffs and now most recently with Xbox in the second phase of their ongoing massive ‘Reset’ process which has seen a total of 268 employees being let go from the company across Halo Studios and several other first-party studios. And following the unfortunate job cuts and studio closures (namely Ninja Theory among others), Double Fine founder Tim Schafer has questioned the economy behind the string of layoffs as the studio itself got separated from Xbox several months ago as a result of the restructuring within the brand.
In a recent video interview with BBC, Schafer has stated that he’s not sure about the economics of making videogames at this point: “I often for years thought I understood them, because there are layoffs, which is bad, and then the people who make games realize, ‘Oh, we need people to make games.’ The executives are like, ‘Oh, we fired everybody, we need some people to make this game,’ they hire them back, and then they… you know.
“So I always assume, ‘Oh, there’ll be this cycle of ups and downs, and ups and downs.’ But it’s been down for like, four years, and I don’t know why. I really don’t, because people are playing games, and people are making money, so I don’t know why there’s a big loss of jobs. I just assume it’s, like, someone is being greedy somewhere. But I hope it is a cycle, and I hope it bounces back.”
He also stresses that the entire industry has become a lot more unstable across both AAA and indie studios, despite the high degree of creativity and energy available:
“I think there’s a lot of life and excitement and creativity in the games industry now, especially in the indie space,” he continued. “I’m not one of those snobs who says only indie games are creative. I think a lot of AAA games do a lot of great creative work.
“It’s just that, it’s been a much more violent place to work in AAA, you know, much more stressful, and your work is often not as rewarded, because you will get laid off as soon as you finish your game. But in indie games, there’s no guarantee of being not… not laid off, but out of money after you ship your game. So, they both have their risks.”
It feels really unfair that whenever there’s a large-scale adjustment or restructuring of any kind in huge brands like Xbox, it’s the employees who end up paying for it in the form of unfortunate layoffs and job cuts.
