2024 Was the Year the Bottom Fell Out of the Games Industry

For people who make video games, 2024 was a year of holding on for dear life. At the annual Game Developers Conference in March, “Survive till ’25” was this year’s incantation, summoned to keep morale on pace. Others resorted to full-on screams, as layoffs in the industry charted record highs and developers found themselves under attack online for conspiratorial nonsense.

In 2023, more than 10,000 developers lost their jobs; one-third of game-makers surveyed at the beginning of this year reported they’d been affected by layoffs in some way. While there were wins for labor organizers at big studios like Activision Blizzard, and collective action around fighting for protection from the encroachment of AI on employment, the industry’s collective brain drain continued in 2024 as workers lost jobs en masse. Six months in, this year’s layoff tally had already surpassed that of 2023. According to Matthew Ball, an adviser and producer in the games and TV space, 2024’s job-loss count will wind up being about 40 percent higher than the previous year’s.

“The explanation is complex and wide-ranging for the same reason the layoffs are so deep and continuous, and sit alongside many studio closures and even more canceled games,” Ball says.

As the industry faltered, games suffered. High-profile releases like Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League were commercial failures. While there were many reasons for this, online right-wing groups reduced it to a single mantra: “go woke, go broke.” By their logic, if a game does poorly and has even a whiff of diversity—be it regarding gender, sexuality, or race—that disappointing performance is the fault of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

Although there have been incredible games released this year—Balatro, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Metaphor: ReFantazio, Astro Bot, Black Myth: Wukong—they just couldn’t distract from the troubles faced by the people making them. They couldn’t make up for the fact that the meta-narrative of video games in 2024 was bleak.

Ball says that the blame for all of this can’t be pinned to a single thing, like capitalism, mismanagement, Covid-19, or even interest rates. It also involves development costs, how studios are staffed, consumers’ spending habits, and game pricing. “This storm is so brutal,” he says, “because it is all of these things at once, and none have really alleviated since the layoffs began.”

For indie developers, specifically, the threat to their existence has been substantial. Dozens of small studios shuttered in 2024, though it’s difficult to get a full picture of how many indie studios the industry lost, as they’re more likely to shut down quietly and without much fanfare—or before many players even know they exist.

With dwindling opportunities to get funding from investors and little cash to go around, developers sought alternative methods to fund their games in the past year. Some took bankrolling into their own hands. Among Us creator Innersloth launched an initiative to give fellow developers backing to finish projects. Others, like Tales of Kenzera: Zau developer Surgent Studios, made their plans public in early development in hopes of attracting investments—all while fending off racist attacks from the anti-DEI crowd, making the challenges they’re facing twofold.

Even studios owned by tech juggernauts weren’t immune to the industry’s contraction. Microsoft shuttered Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks; Sony shut down Firewalk. The latter’s shuttering wasn’t wholly surprising. Its big 2024 release, Concord, was largely considered a flop. But having a hit didn’t give any studios a safety net. Near-universal acclaim for Tango’s Hi-Fi Rush didn’t stop Microsoft’s ax. (It did, though, give Tango just enough juice to be revived by a new buyer.)

In other words, it’s been a dismal year for morale. When developers gathered in Los Angeles in June for Summer Game Fest, developer New Blood Interactive bought out a billboard solely to memorialize their fellow developers who’d lost jobs: “We love you. We miss you. We hate money.”

This year may have been the 10th anniversary of Gamergate—the 2014 online hate movement that shaped the internet harassment tactics apparent today—but online, conversations felt like a trip back in time. Conservative ideologues bemoaned the inclusion of characters who did not fit the cookie-cutter image of a white, cis, hetero man. They complained that DEI was being forced upon them. (It wasn’t.)

In March, harassment toward a small consultancy company called Sweet Baby Inc. reached new heights as bad actors organized through Discords, Steam forums, and other online spaces. Branding themselves as Gamergate 2.0, online mobs harassed developers using tweets, DMs, YouTube videos, and Twitch streams. They targeted anyone with any connection to Sweet Baby and other consultancies—a fairly wide net, as consultants are often brought on to advise on accuracy, sensitivity, and more. Their mission was fighting against “wokeification.” The realities of the economic issues impacting games they love had no place in their tactics; the specter of diversity had more pull than analysts and experts.

Games with Black leads and characters were derided as forced. Female characters deemed unattractive or masculine were suffering from “DEI chin.” Dragon Age: The Veilguard, was criticized by far-right trolls for its customization options, which allow players to create characters with top surgery scars or play with a nonbinary companion. After reviews were released, conspiracists latched onto clichéd phrases or other language as proof that studio BioWare was instructing reviewers how to talk about their game.

Even not-yet-released titles faced bombardment. Compulsion Games’ South of Midnight, about a young Black woman in the Deep South, drew ire from the anti-DEI crowds on platforms like X, where they’ve photoshopped the heroine to make her looks less “repulsive” and put forth conspiracy theories about Sweet Baby’s influence on the game’s development.

But pressure to remain apolitical—a curious agenda for an entertainment form that marries the artistic preferences of narrative and imaginary worlds with agency granted to players who inhabit them—did not come just from a vocal minority. Following the release of Black Myth: Wukong, some streamers were given instructions to avoid talking about Covid-19 or “feminist propaganda.” The guidelines had the opposite effect, encouraging streamers to lead with the code words they’d been barred from: a push against standards meant to actually censor players.

Looking ahead to 2025, Ball says he hears more pessimism generally, but “it just sucks to contemplate, let alone predict.” If there is one plus, he says, it’s that there is “a lot more hiring happening than is generally believed. Downside is, it’s not nearly compensating overall, especially at indies.”

As 2024 comes to a close, the industry is operating—from the outside—with a business-as-usual mindset. In early December, developers gathered in Los Angeles to celebrate at The Game Awards. On stage, host Geoff Keighley made a small speech, amid game announcements, accolades, and a performance from Snoop Dogg.

“The sad reality is that over the past few years the gaming industry has suffered significant and unprecedented industrywide layoffs,” Keighley said. “Those affect the games we get to play and, even more important, the people who make the games we love. We can debate and certainly disagree with the reasons why, and honestly as a show we kind of struggle with how to address these topics in a constructive way.”

Keighley used the segment to introduce TGA’s first “game changer” award, a nod to an individual who has positively impacted the industry. Then the show continued, with headline-dominating announcements about major projects like The Witcher 4 and the next title from The Last of Us developer Naughty Dog.

Amid all of this is the specter of AI. There’s still little insight on how much AI will continue to grow and how future games might use it, but it’s a rising concern as rank-and-file workers are laid off. No one knows when, or if, the industry will bounce back with sustainable jobs and compensation. Yes, there will be games to play. It’s harder to say how many people will be able to make them.