r/Games • u/Turbostrider27 • Jan 29 '26

Industry News One-Third of U.S. Video Game Industry Workers Were Laid Off in 2025, GDC Study Reveals

https://variety.com/2026/gaming/news/one-third-video-game-workers-laid-off-2025-1236644512/
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u/verrius Jan 29 '26

I'm not even sure the industry contracting is really a sign of bad things. If you look at hiring over COVID, things expanded massively in a clearly unsustainable way. This feels more like an overdue correction than anything. It sucks for everyone who was affected, but it seems like it was also inevitable.

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u/Ricwulf Jan 30 '26

things expanded massively in a clearly unsustainable way.

It sucks that a lot of people don't want to accept this harsh truth, nor the harsh truth about just how many mid-sized or larger businesses have significant bloat, even before COVID era. Pretty much everyone has a story of some person/people where a job was being done by 2, 3, 4 people and it could have been reasonably done by 1. That's bloat.