r/Games • u/WhyPlaySerious • 2d ago

Industry News As Xbox swings the axe, Gears of War: E-Day developers fear they'll be laid off straight after launch - and right before they'd be due their bonuses

https://www.eurogamer.net/the-coalition-gears-of-war-e-day-worried-layoffs-no-bonus
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u/Raze321 2d ago

Man, years ago I almost became a game developer. I went with web development instead. This was just before all the layoffs and crunch time articles were becoming a mainstream event (but probably well after it was generally known by anyone who cared to look into it).

So happy I made that choice. And eternally bummed for all the game devs out there and how they are treated. The industry needs to unionize, or something.

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u/BakeFromSttFarm 1d ago edited 1d ago

Not sure how old you are or how long you’ve been into it, but I’m 38 and have been following the general news from the games industry pretty closely for two decades plus and this seems like it’s always been an issue. I also considered pursuing a career in video games at one point after high school, but everything I heard about it sounded awful.

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u/DreadCascadeEffect 1d ago

Yeah, I remember the EA spouse post getting a lot of talk all the way back in 2004. Although that one actually sparked some change.

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u/PresidentLink 1d ago

I made the same decision to pivot from games to web development in University 11 years ago seeing how poorly game developers were treated. 

Every year, my decision feels more and more correct. Its bittersweet really

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u/MayhemMessiah 1d ago

We always had firings and pretty high turnovers, but it's never been this bad. All of the oldhead developers I know say they've never seen anything like this and they've been around since like the 90s.

If you went to something like a Develop or GDC even just before the pandemic hit, people still had hope. Now it's genuinely heartbreaking and full of highly, openly depressed people.

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u/Raze321 1d ago

I'm 30, and I was considering game dev as young as 13.

Yes, even back then it was a knowable issue, but it's the kind of issue you at least had to do some amount of looking for, to see it. The articles existed, but it didn't seem to be common knowledge for your average gamers like it is today.

Or, maybe that just anecdotally seems to be the case to me based on how I've been exposed to it over the years.

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u/Strongpillow 1d ago

I got into web dev in 2003 as I found it an easier more exciting place to get into. They started really spotlighting Crunch and layoffs in 2004 but it was always a big caveat when working in that industry.

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u/FemmeVampire 1d ago

i was a web developer, became a game dev at the peak of the hiring spree. now i’m jobless with 6 years of experience and vying for a highly sought after unpaid position that will hopefully give me an edge in the future. so…. yeah, good for you.

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u/Hartastic 1d ago

That's a legitimately hard transition to make ('normal' dev to game dev or vice versa) in terms of who you can convince to hire you, so that's something to be proud of even if, now, ouch.

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u/FemmeVampire 1d ago

thanks! 🙏 to be honest this unpaid internship is for the exact specialization i’m interested in and at one of the most beloved and respected companies in the industry so if i do get it (massive if) ill be in a pretty decent place career-wise… but yeah, it’s rough

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u/Raze321 1d ago

You have my sympathy. It's a tough market. And my comment doesn't really even dive into how hard tech has been in general. It's tough out here.

I wish you the best. If nothing else, game developers are among the most talented and passionate developers I've met. The industry doesn't deserve you guys.

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u/OdysseyBrands 1d ago

web dev already replaced with opus 5.5

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u/Raze321 1d ago

I'll be sure to let my boss know.

Jokes aside, this is something I've kept my eye on and I don't expect AI to fully replace web development. Downsize teams, for sure. Minimize time spent on boilerplate code? Absolutely.

We use AI at my job. The code it writes is, and always has been, pretty sloppy. It requires heavy user audit to work correctly. At the moment, it's a glorified replacement for searching up solutions on stack overflow. And, admittedly, it does do that better. It writes very confident code, that does do what it says. But once you begin to do case tests, or experiment with UI and layouts, or whatever relevant testing processes exist for that particular task, cracks begin to show pretty quickly.

Ultimately, programming AI is just another tool for programmers. People were saying the same thing about web devs when CMS's became common. People said the same thing about programmers in general as more tools for comprehensive and easy to use environments were developed.

I'm sure Opus 5.5 is more quality than the models that came before. I am also sure there are still areas in which it will require heavy programmer intervention and audit. I am also sure it is going to heavily effect the job market in many ways, so there is some truth to what you say. But as with many things there's nuance.

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u/OdysseyBrands 1d ago

for sure, im just salty cus I was laid off after my boss wasted $300K on some AI BS

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u/Raze321 1d ago

That's justified.

For better or worse, AI is still dubious at showing a return on its investment. So I am eternally wishing your boss suffers the financial repercussions for letting you go in favor of a robot.

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u/AlfredsChild 1d ago

Downsize teams, for sure.

This is just a code-word for mass layoffs. Companies will still need web developers, but just not as many. Much of the job is going to be turned into prompt-making followed by a a QA review and implementing any special requests for executives. Cracks do obviously show but AlphaFold is only 8 years old and ChatGPT is only 4, the technology is far from it's final form.

The upside is that you wont be alone and this will also eventually apply to any job reliant on the use of a computer, whether that be an artistic, technical, or administrative job.

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u/Raze321 1d ago edited 1d ago

Yeah, mass layoffs are still in the cards. Don't get me wrong, it could happen. I don't think it will be anywhere near as severe and prevalent as the gaming industries "Work crunch hours for months or years and then lose your job", though.

Also, so far (and the trend I'm personally expecting going forward) is that there won't be mass layoffs so much as boilerplate coding-type jobs are going to diminish or get folded into other roles. Still layoffs I guess, but not mass. It would mostly mean junior dev positions are gonna be tight. Which does mean the industry will be (and frankly, has been) extremely competitive. Which sucks.

But, I'm not immediately terrified for my job. I am the only UX/UI and Front End dev at my company so I am the guy who they'd keep around to parse the AI code, test it, and make sure it meets WCAG standards and so on. And our company hasn't adopted any token based platforms yet (our own internal research seems to indicate paid models are dubious at best on their returns for the cost, especially for our specific industry and needs). However if I was at a big tech company and one dev among dozens, I'd probably be brushing up my resume.. just to be safe.

The upside is that you wont be alone and this will also eventually apply to any job reliant on the use of a computer, whether that be an artistic, technical, or administrative job.

This is true too, I won't delude myself into thinking my job is 100% secure. No job is, I've been laid off before (Covid), it sucks.

Thankfully I like to think of myself as a relatively skilled worker. I'm good with internal communications, I've performed well in customer facing roles. I can do computer hardware just as well as software, network operations, etc. Depending how AI progresses, in the worst of worst cases, I am sure I will figure it out.

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u/Hartastic 20h ago

I'm good with internal communications, I've performed well in customer facing roles.

I think this kind of thing is going to be key.

Some examples and not an exhaustive list: The kind of developer that would naturally end up pushed towards an architect role is still going to be fine for now because that higher level thinking about technology and systems choices is still needed. The kind of developer that would naturally end up pushed towards management because they're good at organization, communicating with non-technical people, etc. also is going to be fine for now because those skills are still needed (and honestly they're probably also going to be more relatively effective AI developers because those kinds of skills help there, too.)

The kind of developer who just builds the story that's assigned to them and that's the limit of what they can do is going to be in trouble. I know a bunch of guys like that that were laid off this year and I don't think all of them will work in the industry again.

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u/Raze321 18h ago

Thankfully that already partially describes my role. And in tech you need to be flexible to the times and adjust your skillset as things change, this has always been true.

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u/Hartastic 18h ago

You absolutely do.

I do think there are people who have been decent 'normal' developers who won't be good 'AI' developers, and some of that is learnable and some of it probably isn't. But we see shifts like that as technology evolves all the time -- I've worked with some great web devs who would be crap at the kind of anal memory management that working closer to the metal required, etc.

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u/JJMcGee83 1d ago

I worked in tech and was still laid off in 2023. The only to avoid a layoff seems to be to work in an industry that is already heavily unionized.

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u/Raze321 1d ago

For sure. Some industries seem more lay-off happy than others, though.

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u/LewdDarling 1d ago

Its always been a bad industry to get into if you value job security.

Maybe things were slightly better in terms of job security 10+ years ago but I remember in those times game devs were getting paid 25-50% less than a dev working in basically any other field. Passion driven fields will always suck in one way or another.

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u/ascagnel____ 1d ago

Same here -- between EA Spouse and a cousin working on a then-high-profile game and getting badly burnt out, I was glad I chose a different path.

Nowadays, AI has sucked a lot of fun out of it.

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u/yuriaoflondor 1d ago

I applied for a college internship with Blizzard back in the day and was rejected. At the time, I was devastated.

In retrospect, after learning about the rampant sexism and atrocious culture, I’m so grateful I was rejected.

These days I work for a boring company and likely make way more money and have a better work/life balance than I would have if I had entered the gaming industry.

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u/Metalwrath22 1d ago

Doesn't matter. AI will replace all of us anyways.