With a looming recession, apparently some tech companies have started to lay off some of their employees. So far, I haven’t heard much of the same happening in the video game industry. The one thing I did read on Twitter was that Microsoft laid off an entire team was working on “games tech” but was not part of their studios organization, so not a conventional game dev team. That’s not to say layoffs won’t be coming for game developers either. With inflation high and people paying more for everything, gamers might have to make some difficult choices with what to do with their money. I have no doubt that some studios will see revenue fall.
What’s interesting is that I am still seeing people leaving their current role for new opportunities elsewhere. Just thinking about the number of goodbye e-mails I’ve read, I think four people at my studio are going to leave this month alone. At least for games, studios are still hiring and people are definitely willing to change jobs. I’m not sure how long this will last though. 2023 might be a lean year but it’s difficult to say how lean.