'Left high and dry': Confessions of a laid-off gaming industry worker
digiday.com
digiday.com
> The best thing was that the player base appreciated every one of us, and constantly thanked us for making things better.
I work in games and this is honestly one of my biggest drivers. I of course love the game as well and want to make it better, but community praise is just next level energy for me.
Over the last few years many of us at our studio have been doxxed, threatened, called on our personal phones, etc. and that can really take the wind out of my sails. But when you get some positive or constructive feedback about trying to make the game better it really helps.
Working in games has the opportunity to be such a collaborative process with coworkers and community and it is awesome when it works well.
It's a simple supply/demand calculation. "Game dev" is high on the dream-job list -- "internal framework developer for MegaCo" is not. Game engines have made game dev more accessible than ever, the raw talent pool is bigger than its ever been.
It's a lot like being a professional musician. The hours suck, the environment is usually crap, it spills into your home life all the time... and the pay sucks unless you're the 0.1% (or a business person in the field instead of a performer) but lots and lots of people want to do it and will grind away at being a pro musician, because they're passionate about it.
If there's any set of devs that needs a union or is most like other fields where unionization is beneficial, it's game devs.
Indeed. There's even a term for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compensating_differential
NGL, because this is actually my dream job.
Ultimately, that place was enormously engaging, but I was never going to buy a house and retire on what I was making there, so I left for a better paying gig. Our users really loved the product and eagerly engaged with us. I got several trips to races, including pit and garage access passes, several drivers visited our studio while in town for the NH race, and I learned a ton about both coding and racing.
I'm really glad I did it, but I'm also glad I quit it.
I understand this rationally and yet at every job I've worked at I've still felt pretty secure until the moment I've been laid off (which for the record has happened to me 4 times in the last 8 years).
If you're a hard worker and you're providing a lot of value you learn the risk is never that anyone would want to lay you off individually, but that some higher up who has very little care or understanding for who is providing value will decide that you're no longer needed.
It's something that I've only really came to terms with over the last few years – that no amount of effort will save you from layoffs. The only thing that will save you is luck. When I was in my twenties I honestly thought that if I just provide enough value my job would always be safe.
I guess I'm just saying that I understand it from an emotional perspective. Rationally I understand you can go from feeling like the most valuable person in your department to unemployed in 24 hours. But emotionally the fact that this can happen still messes with me.
You've been laid off on average once every 2 years. I've been laid off once in 19 years. Did I just get lucky? Does it really just all come down to luck like you claim? Or is there more that goes into it? Maybe someone could do the math - if everyone had the same "luck" as you, what are the odds that I made it 19 years with only 1 layoff?
I think there is this idea that under-performers are the ones that lose their jobs in layoffs – or at least that's what I used to think. Yet, despite always being one of the most valuable people in my team, this has never protected me, or the majority of people I've seen who have lost their jobs. That's really my point.
That said, if you are an under-performer you probably will increase your odds of being laid off. I have seen a number of downsizings before where people are cut because they were performing as well as others. So maybe I should have clarified that a bit more, but I would still stand by my overall point that assuming you're not under-performing you're probably not at any increased risk of layoffs vs someone who's outperforming.
And perhaps one final caveat here is that if you are an out-performer and you are laid off you will probably find it easier to find work in the future because at the very least the people you've worked with in the past will want to work with you again.
Yep. The computer games industry has had a well-deserved reputation for being awful to work in for decades.
It used to be that confession referred strictly to a revelation of one's wrongdoing. Then, ironically, of some less-than-perfect doing, or unorthodox ways.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_English_Opiu...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_a_Mask
https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Confessions_of_a_Fr...
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Confessions_of_a_Drunka...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_a_Book_Reviewer
etc.
E.g. if someone known to be an outspoken liberal revealed that they voted for a far right candidate, that would qualify as a confession.
>For the latest edition of our Confessions series, in which we trade anonymity for candor, Digiday spoke to a gaming industry worker who lost their job during January’s wave of layoffs.
It seems the newsletter's use of the term is related to letting verified sources talk about their experiences with honesty, lest they get doxxed or blackballed from an industry.
I've wanted for a while to create a laided off movie playlist. Of course at the time I wasn't laid off so I didn't have the time and now that I'm laid off I also don't have the time. Nowadays finding a new job is in itself a full-time job.
But off the top of my head I would say that the movies Broadcast News and In Good Company are descent picks.
Older now I look back at how many layoff cycles have been in my life. If you make it through without getting hit, you're a very lucky person, though after my last layoff I chose stability over risk and that was just as terrible as being laid off.
It is an amazing industry to work at with people full of passion. I left that industry however about 7 years ago and never looked back. The pay as a developer there is really low, and crunching was at least then still a really “normal” thing. A shame though as developers in the game industry are often really highly skilled in their craft and know machines and all their layers very well.
Since I left I basically quadrupled my salary in these last years, and frankly my day to day work is easier and a lot less pressure…
I’m sure there are good games companies out there and I can imagine that work life balance is a lot better in 2024 then it used to be. Still, pretty sure the pay still sucks… if not I wouldn’t mind going back one day. Then again, don’t mind either way. I found that my true passion and drive is a lot more meta than games themselves.
Much of the non-Asian market are pivoting to (and have been) FTP microtransactions.
If even a handful of the laws against loot crates, digital sales, etc come to Europe and the US, the gaming industry will have a reckoning unlike anything we’ve seen. Billions were lost (I think around 80) overnight in China’s game market.
I’m torn because some studios are responsible with this business model, and enables a large swath of content for us gamers.
But obviously it’s abused by many other companies, and is detrimental to many kid’s development with variable rewards at play (however, this is a moot point if the game is rated M. It’s on the parents not to give their kids access to such games if there exists that risk)
I think this is just the start of large layoffs in gaming. EA has barely produced a multiplayer game without needing years post-release to get it stable. Meanwhile small indie studios are blowing AAA games out of the water in depth and quality.
Profits, perhaps, but not value.
This industry is filled with ego centric people that really think they are special.
Yeah, but that market needs empathy. Seems to be in rather short supply for some HN commenters these days.
Truth is that games will always be guesswork and investing in games should be a portfolio business, not a VC driven exit style thing. Games got too bloated and reality has returned. Now we are back to where we were, almost. Many jobs came and went in this process.
Anyone with any sense would have bailed a few years ago.
The sheer lack of human understanding on display.
It isn't easy for many people to switch jobs. Moreso when the job is somewhat enjoyable, familiar and pays decent. Moreso when you're supporting others. If your skillet is entirely in the game industry, where does one easily jump?
I spit on the idea that anyone who is left in the game industry "has no sense".
Where does this active scorn for game developers come from? This isn't the first comment from you to express disinterest in those workers.
People have warned about the volatility and negatives of the video game industry for decades. They're well known. But there are unique and cool aspects of those projects that still draw people to them despite the known downsides.
It's a bit like hearing someone with a beach house complain about hurricanes. We can have empathy for them while acknowledging that they agreed to that risk voluntarily, and that it was a well known and well documented risk.
Many devs grew up with the dream of working for the next big title and instead ended up as a web dev who creates a button in React every few weeks. Now they are trying to justify their life choices.
But working for a big company is a bad career. Too much overhead, garbage leadership and vision, wokeism...
I'm forever baffled how gaming consumers are able to muster such anger at changes in representation and character design while continuing to get nickel and dimed by monetization experts at these companies. I don't think this is intentional misdirection on the part of gaming publishers, but if they did want to channel anger away from the core ways they're exploiting their audience they would be hard pressed to find a better distraction.
It is really bad move to work for "woke" companies as cis hetero white guy with some experience. You have to work much harder. And promotions to senior positions are limited...
"I don't like the games of the last few years, so let's dunk on people who have been part of a mass layoff with some thoughtful 'hurti durti, if you had any sense you would have bailed a few years ago'."
Gee, thanks for your 20/20 hindsight advice, presented in this nice way. I'm sure people will appreciate it.
I was in a role for quite a few years that I mostly enjoyed, but even if the company hadn't had a downward turn, compensation was probably half that of my next job (at best).
Yes. It is absolutely wild to think that your coworkers should risk their livelihoods to keep around people that, at least in theory, the company cannot afford to keep.
On the other hand, the industry is also filled with a ton of "barely above mediocre" games that just copy the latest hype trend on twitch, so it's not so good for gamers that don't like to slog through a bunch of drivel while browsing Steam for new things to play.
Basically, the chances of making it big in gaming are pretty slim, and most devs would be better off doing something else for a bigger and steadier paycheck. I don't see this changing in the next 10 years.