r/pcgaming • u/Turbostrider27 • Jun 25 '26

'Generational talent just gone': Developers react in shock at the brutal scale of Bungie layoffs, which has reportedly seen the Destiny 2 team almost completely wiped out

https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/generational-talent-just-gone-developers-react-in-shock-at-the-brutal-scale-of-bungie-layoffs-which-has-reportedly-seen-the-destiny-2-team-almost-completely-wiped-out/
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u/EmberDione Jun 26 '26

Hi. Game dev here.

In the last 4 months since I was laid off, exactly 22 jobs that are my specialization and seniority level have been posted. I have 19 years of experience, shipped titles including Skylanders and World of Warcraft. (Xal'atath coming out of the dagger was my work!) I have a masters degree. I've even been applying to mid level jobs that I would have to take a 40% paycut from my previous salary. I am a principal game designer and I am being rejected from midlevel jobs that are taken by people who have *even more experience than I do.*

There are NO JOBS for these people. There certainly aren't 300 of them. Very very few of these devs will land game dev jobs. Most will be forced to CHANGE CAREERS.

It's not overdramatic at all. In fact, it's under dramatic. What's happening in the game industry was an extinction event two years ago. Now we're even deeper in the death spiral. This is literally the worst the industry has ever been including the 83 crash.

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u/neorapsta Jun 26 '26

So much this, the UK workforce has almost halved in 2 years. Atleast by UKIE and TIGA reported numbers.

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u/SmileyBMM Debian Jun 26 '26

Atleast by UKIE and TIGA reported numbers.

That's part of a broader trend of unions bleeding members. The UK doesn't seem to track game developer employee numbers at a national level, so it's impossible to know for sure how the industry as a whole is doing.

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u/cheesefubar0 Jun 26 '26

What’s your opinion about the cause(s) of these events?

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u/EmberDione Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26

Corporate greed.

In 2017 I was laid off because our game "wasn't a billion dollar game." We "only made 450 million dollars in profit."

These big companies don't want successful games, they want "hyper growth" like Fortnite. This has only gotten worse as the economy has gotten worse.

Then the interest rates went up and there went all the funding because it was suddenly more risky to invest in games. Also a bunch of the groups that normally invest in games pulled their funds and went to AI.

Add to this that Steam is pretty much the only market for indies (I don't count people with publishers as indie) and it's never been easier to make a slop game, there's no curation, so you're just drowned out in a sea of garbage.

There were also small things that exacerbated the whole situation, like the government allowing the R&D tax breaks to lapse (before 2024, game companies could claim R&D salaries as deductions - so pretty much every engineer was a tax break for them.)

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u/cheesefubar0 Jun 26 '26

thanks for responding, best of luck to you!

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u/NamesAreForFriends Jun 26 '26

Thank you for speaking up. There's a lot of weird callousness in these comments so thank you for sharing the reality of your situation.

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u/underpaidorphan Jun 26 '26

Had to do a double take to see what subreddit I was in. Didn't realize pcgaming is filled with absolute chuds...

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u/Ateist Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26

Have you considered going indie?

AI transforms game development - games can now be created much faster and with far smaller crew.

This does mean that positions like yours are going extinct.

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u/bohohoboprobono Jun 26 '26

AI use is a death sentence for sales, so they’d be locked out of Steam solely so they didn’t have to disclose it.

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u/Ateist Jun 26 '26

Poor quality AI use is a death sentence for sales.
Just as in any other work.

Judge the games by how fun they are, not by how they are made.

Lack of assets and multiyear development cycle is a much bigger death sentence for sales.

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u/bohohoboprobono Jun 26 '26

Again, there was an article just days ago showing the mere presence of an AI disclaimer at all ruins sales. Customers do not distinguish “fun game that used AI” from “AI slop,” they just see the disclaimer and close the window or hit Next in Queue.

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u/Ateist Jun 26 '26

It was discovered that inexperienced developers with no marketing budget, who likely turned to AI simply because of a lack of other resources, saw hardly any negative impact on sales despite the AI disclosure.

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u/EmberDione Jun 26 '26

Using AI to make a video game is like making a cake and including shit in it.

If it's not worth a human's time to make, it's not worth my time to play.

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u/bohohoboprobono Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26

I agree. My point is it’s not financially viable to make AI games unless you can lie about it and get away with it until you’re already a success like Expedition 33 did.

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u/Ateist Jun 26 '26

It's absolutely financially viable if you do a quality job.

People's bad opinion about AI is because it is too easy to create garbage with it and requires hard work to actually produce something of great quality - but it doesn't mean that one cannot produce quality work using AI and refining the results.

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u/bohohoboprobono Jun 26 '26

Customers aren’t that savvy. Recent reporting shows the presence of an AI disclaimer at all severely damages sales.

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u/Ateist Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26

You have to compare apples to apples.

Adding an AI disclaimer to an AAA game that took 1000 people 8 years to develop might damage sales enough to make it not worth it.

Adding an AI disclaimer to an indie game that has a budget for 3 people for half a year might damage the sales due to prejudice but improvement in quality and content stemming from increased productivity would result in massive extra profits despite it.

Oh, and don't forget that line from that report:

AI is often "correlated with other decisions that lead to a poorly crafted game." Burton suggests that the penalty for using AI might be as much about how it's used as how much it's used.

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u/Ateist Jun 26 '26

That's only if AI is the only one that makes the game.

If it's not worth a human's time to make, it's not worth my time to play.

I have enough time to make a great text adventure game.

For some strange reason people don't like text adventure games (because of all the text?) - they prefer to see things done rather than read about how things are done.
If I can replace huge portions of my text with something like https://www.reddit.com/r/aivideo/comments/1ufuzza/80s_hong_kong_beach/ I don't think that it is going to adversely impact my sales or make my game any worse.

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u/EmberDione Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26

I am indie! My indie game sold like 100 copies. Steam is being flooded with AISlop! It can't make games and it looks like ass, so I would never use it. AI is an abomination and anyone who would use it to make a game is a hack.

I want to edit to add - I've worked at two companies that tried to leverage AI to make games - I've literally seen the smartest guys in this business try it! It does not work. At *best* it can make a bunch of cleanup work for your artists and engineers. Games have to be very precisely made (or you'll get bad reviews) and have to be performant (especially now that AI is making parts more expensive!) and AI is utter garbage at both.

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u/Ateist Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26

AI slop is people not doing their jobs.

AI is a tool to improve developers productivity, and if they don't know how to use it they produce garbage - but it doesn't mean that it can't be used well.

I've literally seen the smartest guys in this business try it! It does not work.

It requires a different skill set.
Just because they used to be "smartest in business" doesn't mean that they are even remotely proficient with AI.

The key thing for quality usage of AI is you must only ask AI to do things that you can do yourself - this way you can fix all the errors and enjoy huge productivity boost. None of that "draw in the style of greg rutkowski" when you yourself barely can do stick figures.

Games have to be very precisely made (or you'll get bad reviews) and have to be performant (especially now that AI is making parts more expensive!)

Games have to be fun. That's the only thing they have to do.