Gaming Industry Layoffs Have Hit A Tipping Point
Disclaimer: None of the ideas expressed in this blog post are shared, supported, or endorsed in any manner by Gamerjibe.
Gaming industry layoffs have been in the news A LOT lately (way more than they ever should be). Sure, company profit margins are high and CEO/CFO quarterly conference calls with investors paint the picture of a thriving industry making mountains of money with absolutely no end in sight. How do gaming industry executives plan to sustain these record-setting profits?
By laying off the non-essentials, of course.
The most recent layoff that has the gaming industry triggered (and rightfully so), is the massive one that AAA Gaming juggernaut, Activision Blizzard instigated. Basically, Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick kicked off the company’s quarterly investor conference call with a self-congratulatory speech that outlined a few “changes” that needed to be made:
“While our financial results for 2018 were the best in our history, we didn’t realize our full potential. To help us reach our full potential, we have made a number of important leadership changes. These changes should enable us to achieve the many opportunities our industry affords us, especially with our powerful owned franchises, our strong commercial capabilities, our direct digital connections to hundreds of millions of players, and our extraordinarily talented employees.”
After applauding his “extraordinary talented employees” for making the company boatloads of profits, Kotick went on to slash 8 percent of its workforce in a restructuring. That amounts to roughly 800 employees; not all of which were in leadership roles as Kotick had alluded to in his speech. Even though the company achieved record profits, they still didn’t meet their own lofty expectations for the 2018 fiscal year.
Blizzard executives didn’t take pay cuts like former Nintendo president Satoru Iwata didto preserve the jobs of developers after the company had massive shortfalls in 2014. They did the exact opposite: they cut 800 jobs and gave themselves millions of dollars in salary raises and cashed in on massive increases in their stock equity. What did Blizzard employees get? A low ball severance package (only salary employees…contractors got nothing) and a “better luck next time” pat on the shoulder by their ex-CEO that makes Scrooge McDuck look like Bill Gates (charitable).
The one thing that industry onlookers can learn from these layoffs is that gaming industry employees are resilient and resourceful (they have to be). They have an uncanny ability to bounce back from layoffs and jump right into a new project and build something truly special that gamers line up for midnight releases for. The gaming industry does have a lot of openings, which is a silver lining of sorts for those affected by this massive string of layoffs and studio closures. But, other than that, it’s not looking good in the long-term as long as employees remain non-unionized.
This is why the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), an organization that represents more than 12 million workers in 50 different labor unions, has stepped up to issue a powerful public statement of support to game developers in the United States. AFL-CIO ended with a simple, yet profound statement to gaming industry employees:
Your fight is our fight
Gaming industry employees deserve their fair cut. For all of the grueling 100-hour weeks spent sleeping under cubicle desks during crunch for months on end, gaming industry employees shouldn’t be discarded for their efforts. They should be the ones getting the accolades. They should be the ones on stage introducing their company’s new AAA game and taking a bow. And after all this, they should be able to keep their jobs for longer than a fiscal year.
