Over 5,600 Video Game Industry Employees Have Been Laid Off in January 2024 - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 25 January 2024 / 5,039 Views
2023 ended up seeing over 10,000 employees in the video game industry laid off and 2024 is on track to be an even worse year for layoffs.
Video Games Layoffs has reported 3,770 have been laid off in 2024 as of January 24. Once you add in the 1,900 laid off at Microsoft's gaming division that brings the total to 5,670 laid off in less than a month.
Microsoft today announced it was laying off 1,900 employees at its gaming division, which is about eight percent of the around 22,000 employees at Microsoft Gaming. The layoffs are primarily at Activision Blizzard, however, some at Xbox Game Studios and Bethesda/ZeniMax will also be impacted.
The second biggest layoff in the gaming industry in 2024 was 1,800 laid off at Unity on January 8, 2024, which is nearly 25 percent of its total workforce.
Twitch laid off over 500 employees or around 35 percent of its staff on January 10 and earlier this week Riot Games announced it was laying off about 530 employees or 11 percent of its total workforce.
Thanks, VideoGamesChronicle.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
More Articles
This industry is in shambles. Workers are being let go all over the place, and yet at the same time many of these massive companies are still reporting record revenue and profits on an almost yearly basis. Microsoft's quarterly earnings report is due to be release on January 30, and I'm very curious to see what it shows. Last quarter they were up by every metric, by over 25% in some regards, and yet they've still fired thousands of people since.
In the last earnings report they said the gaming segment generated close to $4 billion in revenue. How much the gaming side's profits were I can't say, but that's still a significant portion of the company's revenue. Obviously Microsoft is a ridiculously massive company that generates tens of billions in revenue and profits each year, but that just makes these layoffs even worse in my eyes. The money they ostensibly save by making these cuts is practically nothing, basically just padding the bottom line and making it look just a tiny bit better to the stock holders.
It's a massive post-covid correction.
Companies went on hiring sprees due to sudden spikes in demand in the digital landscape... And now that things have returned to normal, companies need to scale down their employees to match.
Plus... In Microsoft's case it's also consolidating it's assets...
Whenever you make a large acquisition of another company you are going to end up with two people doing the same job, one at the current company, one at the new company... And thus the need to consolidate those work positions.
The reason why someone at say... Bethesda/Zenimax may have been displaced is because someone with more skills and experience may have been a better option from the newly acquired company.
It's just a sad reality of acquisitions unfortunately.
Sometimes though, people are given the option to work elsewhere in the company, but with business tightening it's belts, that may not be an option in this instance.
Hopefully these individuals go on to find further employment that augments their skills quickly.
Ask yourself this, If you were a buisness owner, do you keep people on the books when you dont need them or they dont preform?
I hate seeing this trend. I remember wanting to be a game designer when I was younger.
Same......I'm sure many of us on the site did at one point as well.
I was very close to going to college in a game design program after being accepted, but decided at the last minute just about that I didn't want the student loan debt nor did I want to leave my area to work in game design (there is only a single game design studio within easy driving distance of me and it is small, less than 10 people).
Its not a trend. Its always happened.
How much of this is just getting rid of the fat? MS are not tight on money, they aren't struggling. It's bad for those employees but I'm wondering on why they are let go and what they did. I look at my own company's growth and wonder what many the people we hired in IT do (we have like 3 or 4 project managers who I know aren't needed), but I recognise that I have a certain grandeur case as I've been there for so long.
Microsoft literally just passed the $3 trillion dollar market cap threshold... They are single handily worth more than any of the economies of Italy/Brazil/Canada/Russia/South Kora/Australia etc'.
They would likely be ranked 7th in terms of value if they were a nation.
They aren't struggling.
The post revolving around it and concluding with that statement, replying to another post that already said the same thing definitely felt weird, to be honest.
Reading it felt like it was a misread of "they are" instead of "they aren't", to me.
Maybe a "yeah" or "definitely" or "agreed" before the final statement could have helped, but that's just how it felt to me reading it.
Either way, as it was on purpose and not a mistake, no worries.
I don't think this is going to stop. With more automation becoming regular each day, and with AI tools growing, there will be less need to hire people for developer, artists, even manager roles.
I say this as a developer myself (not in gaming).
We all need to be investing money into companies doing AI things so we can at least make some dividends while we are jobless lol.
I sincerely doubt employees who fear that they may be laid off will be able to develop software titles that could impress people." - Nintendo's Iwata on layoffs.
That's just so many people =/
Speechless.
Almost half of that is by anti-competitive / anti- consumer / copycat / monopolistic / tax evasion corrupt Corp that is m$
Basically everyone except Nintendo is laying people off, even precious Sony.
though I agree corporations operate by the profit motive first and the consumer second...this post just reads like a bunch of buzz words slammed together to show how much you despise big business lmao.
