The Death March

Back in January, I wrote this:

Every game developer is terrified. Every game developer knows someone who has been long-term unemployed over the past year, or is in that state themselves, or has left the industry.

This is unsustainable. We cannot work like this. We cannot function like this.

Game development is in an extinction level event crisis, and it is entirely self inflicted.

Nine months later, and it has gotten worse. Much worse. We are going extinct. For God's sake, there's a Wikipedia article about it now. According to the tally there, since I wrote about this last, over 6,700 more game developers have lost their jobs.

If you're a developer, LinkedIn is a particularly grim chronicle of the times. Posts there can be broken down thusly:

• People who have been laid off, and are relentlessly trying to be cheerful about it because they know they have no choice. "Time for new opportunities! This is a chance for personal growth!"
• Utterly tone deaf and clueless people, usually C-suite executives, who say that the panic is overblown, real talents have no problem finding work, and the real threat is the growth of unions.
• Even more utterly tone deaf and clueless people who see this as an opportunity to sell generative AI snake oil. "This is a natural retrenchment after a disruptive new technology! It's unfortunate for the people out of work, but now we can develop games cheaper and faster!"

I don't read LinkedIn much any more. Partially due to survivor's guilt. We'll get to that.

Ancillary industries are being hit hard as well. Unity, maker of one of the most popular 3D engines, has laid off almost 3000 people in the past year. Epic, maker of one of the other most popular 3D engines, has laid off over 800. And if you're a writer or reviewer who writes about the gaming industry? There is nothing there any more. A combination of truly insanely stupid mismanagement and relentlessly driving for AI-driven quantity over human-written quality has destroyed game industry journalism as a profession, almost completely. Worker-owned collective websites like Aftermath and small independents like Paste try to fill the gap left, but they can't afford to sustain themselves, much less the fragments of venture capital's misadventures.

And make no mistake, this is completely driven by venture capitalism. The game industry is profitable! There's no logical reason for companies to lay off so many of the workers that they need, save one: making shareholders happy. And shareholders truly do not care about the well being of workers, or the long term survivability of companies that they invest in. They are focused relentlessly on short term gains that they can cash out as quickly as possible. It's a Ponzi scheme writ large, and it is killing us in many ways. The game industry is just a very visible part, and one I happen to be intimately familiar with.

Venture capitalism is why companies like Embracer can purchase half a dozen companies, absolutely wreck them, fire everyone who works there, and then continue blithely on as if nothing ever happened with no consequences. Lars Wingefor, CEO of Embracer, had this to say:

I think looking at the 8% reduction in workforce [at Embracer], there is obviously – I don't know the number for the whole industry, but I think it's something that everyone needs to get through.

You know how Wingefor "got through" it? By keeping his job, despite directly causing the destruction of over a half dozen game companies and layoffs of over 10,000 employees. Which he was paid over $175,000 for last year in cash compensation, and over 20% of stock in the company.

This whole situation is insane! If I went in to work and wasted millions of dollars, I would not only be fired, I would probably be prosecuted! But for the executives currently piloting game companies into the ground at supersonic speeds, it's considered "willingness to take risks". And shareholders love it. Just be sure to lay people off before the quarterly earnings report. You know, to demonstrate fiscal responsibility.

I don't mean to pick on Lars Wingefor. I mean, I do, in that he absolutely deserves it, in that he is a perfect, platonic example of C-suite malfeasance that is destroying our industry for short term growth or stunning lack thereof through hilariously stupid decisions. But he's just one person. There is a Lars Wingefor at EA. There is a Lars Wingefor at Epic. We won't even talk about Unity. Instead, we'll mention the recent Lars Wingefor at Sony, Chris Deering, who had this incredibly insightful commentary on recent layoffs he was responsible for (hah, not really, no one in C-suites takes responsibility for any goddamn thing ever):

Deering also stated in the interview that having a skill in game development does not mean a lifetime of “poverty or limitation,” and that those who were recently laid off should “figure out how to get through it.”

“Drive an Uber or whatever, go off to find a cheap place to live and go to the beach for a year,” said Deering.

He also said that he is “optimistic” about the future of those in the industry who have been axed from their jobs, and that their severance packages should help cushion the blow.

“I presume people were paid some kind of decent severance package, and by the time that runs out … Well, you know, that’s life,” said Deering.

These are the breathtakingly idiotic words of someone who has never had to take responsibility for one goddamned thing in his entire misbegotten life, and I'm including wearing pants. I would call them tone-deaf, but that is an unforgivable insult to people who aren't good at music appreciation.

AI isn't going to fix this, because AI isn't going to fix a single thing other than "we have a surplus of electricity this week". The only thing that will fix this is if corporate leadership at AAA game companies manage to extract their heads from their asses and remember what the goddamned hell the words "long term value growth" means. I'm not even going to try to expect them to take any kind of interest or responsibility for the thousands of people who depend on them not to fuck up their lives through stupid decision making, because that would require them to be goddamned human beings and at this point I'm just hoping for reasonably self-interested Ferengi who have the lobes for business.

It's too late for me, anyway. I'm in my late 50s, and unhireable. The job I hold currently will, almost certainly, be my last game industry job. And you know what? I won't miss it. I had fun, I shipped a few games, one of which I'm actually quite proud of, and learned enough to make games only I would ever want to actually play as a hobby, while earning enough via freelancing to hopefully not become a hobo or something. Because if I'm too old to be a game developer, I'm way too old to be a hobo.

But what makes me angry are the tens of thousands of my colleagues whose lives have been destroyed through incompetence, greed, and stupidity. What makes me furious is the fact that gaming, the hobby I still love despite being a grown ass adult, is being held hostage by huge budgets and failing megacorporations and the wreckage of late stage capitalism. What makes me sad is that this could all have been avoided if people just acted in their own long term interests for once in a fucking decade.

And another thing: I'm mad. Please put in the newspaper that I got mad.