Cognition Dissemination: The Industry Unsafe for Everyone
Swen Vincke, director of Baldur’s Gate 3 and founder and CEO of its developer Larian Studios, had a poignant take on the recent sobering amount of video game layoffs since late last year. He delivered the comments during the Independent Games Festival Awards and Game Developers Choice Awards at the recent (and reportedly sparingly-attended) Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.
“Greed has been fucking this whole thing up for so long, since I started,” he said when referring to the layoffs, as reported by Eurogamer. He continued:
“I’ve been fighting publishers my entire life and I keep on seeing the same, same, same mistakes over, and over and over.
“It’s always the quarterly profits. The only thing that matters are the numbers, and then you fire everybody and then next year you say ‘shit I’m out of developers’ and then you start hiring people again, and then you do acquisitions, and then you put them in the same loop again, and it’s just broken…
“You don’t have to. You can make reserves. Just slow down a bit. Slow down on the greed. Be resilient, take care of the people, don’t lose the institutional knowledge that’s been built up in the people you lose every single time, so you have to go through the same cycle over and over and over. It really pisses me off.”
This was the kind of speech someone needed to make in a place created for game developers to explain their production processes behind their games, regardless of their budgets. The convention (because it’s more than just a conference) has been slightly co-opted by companies that have used the opportunity to make announcements. Fortunately, the spirit still shines through, as it did here and from similar speeches from other developers. Vincke was the most important among them, after helming the development of a game nominated for several Game of the Year awards, and won plenty of them. Between this and his comment that Larian’s next title won’t be another Baldur’s Gate game, for unsurprising reasons, he makes a strong case for how the best bosses of game development houses are the developers themselves.
The rate of game development layoffs has barely let up since the latter half of 2023. It’s partially thanks to developers and the publishers who work with them realizing they hired too many during the pandemic. Many of them mistakenly, and peculiarly, figured the audience that started playing more video games during the COVID-19 pandemic would stick around, something unlikely to happen for reasons that should be clear to everyone — except, apparently, for executives. Those execs and the company shareholders are largely concerned with whether the numbers go up. If the numbers do not go up enough, they consider this a colossal problem. The goal is always infinite growth, despite cases where that’s unsustainable.
There are new layoffs to discuss every week, including this past one. Velan Studios, developer of now-defunct live service title Knockout City, announced that the company is in the earliest stages of reorganization. This means layoffs will occur eventually. Imagine how the employees will be on pins and needles over the next two months, unaware of whether they’ll be caught up in the group who will receive pink slips. Something Wicked, a development team announced to be formed less than two years ago that hasn’t even released their first game yet, also announced layoffs. And this week was lighter than others.
The most frightening part of these layoffs is how it doesn’t matter how good the studio involved has done their jobs. Layoffs and studio closures were common during the Great Recession, though largely after studios released underperforming titles. The phenomenon heavily damaged B-tier titles outside Japan and Asian territories. This time, even those which have released successful titles have dealt with layoffs and project cancellations. Take Respawn Entertainment, who suffered from this. It’s despite Star Wars Jedi: Survivor selling extremely well and their axed project being another Star Wars title — a game rumored to feature a Mandalorian, in this case. No one is safe.
There are, of course, special cases like Embracer Group. Who could have foreseen that mass acquiring studios with no solid subsequent plan would end in disaster? Who could have known that betting the farm on a deal with Saudi Arabia wasn’t foolproof? Not CEO Lars Wingefors, still in his position despite these terrible gambles. All the developers who can’t afford to go independent or get sold to slightly-better publishers are paying the price through no fault of their own. All indications suggest that they’re still not done shedding talent and cancelling games yet.
Vincke’s comments will sadly not be anywhere near enough to stop the torrent of layoffs, though no one really expected them to be. Current industry trends and traditions are far too entrenched for the mere words of one developer to halt anything, however instrumental he is. The hope is that more like him will establish their own companies, those who won’t become entrenched in vicious mass hiring and mass layoff cycles that have become common in the video gaming industry — particularly those with AAA developments and slightly below them. In the meantime, this will continue to worsen.
About The Author
Geoff
News Editor | Geoff is some nerd who writes for a blog and thinks he's knowledgeable. He write a lot about video games, but is capable of writing about other subjects, too. Twitter
