In recent years, the video game industry witnessed a disturbing trend of frequent layoffs, with 2023 experiencing nearly weekly workforce reductions across publishers, developers and related companies, resulting in at least 6,000 job losses.
Unfortunately, the trend appears set to continue in 2024, as evident from a series of layoffs observed in the first weeks of the year.
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Kotaku has taken on the task of monitoring and documenting the layoffs throughout 2024.
VR games developer Archiact initiated the first round of layoffs on Jan. 4, with an unspecified number of employees affected. Bossa Studios followed suit with 19 layoffs, primarily in QA and production roles, reported on Jan. 5.
The situation escalated further with Unity Software Inc U announcing the largest layoffs in its history on Jan. 8, with plans to cut 1,800 jobs (approximately 25% of its workforce) by the end of March.
Twitch, the Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN-owned video game streaming platform, was reported to be preparing for a significant layoff of 500 employees (about 35% of its total staff) by the end of January.
On Jan. 11, Playtika Holding Corp PLTK, a mobile game publisher, disclosed its intention to lay off 300-400 employees, constituting around 10% of its total workforce.
Discord, a popular video game chat software developer, joined the list with a planned layoff of approximately 170 employees, or 17% of its workforce, as reported by The Verge on Jan. 11.
As of Jan. 11, 2024, a total of at least 2,789 people have been or will be affected by these layoffs.
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Photo: Wan wei on Shutterstock.
Image and article originally from www.benzinga.com. Read the original article here.