Did video game investment hit rock bottom, and is it ready to go back up?

gamesindustry.biz:

After the annus horribilis that was 2023 and with the rough start that in many ways characterized 2024, it's probably fair to say that many people are worried about the state of the industry and how it could move forward. At Reboot Develop Blue 2024, a panel tackled this very topic and argued that, while the industry has hit rock bottom, it is ready to go back up.

The panel saw on stage Jonas Antonsson (CEO at Raw Fury), Anders Leicht Rohde (CCO of Funday Games), Jussi Tähtinen (CEO at Nitro Games) and Antonio Pašalić (Program Director at WN Media Group). The moderator was Shum Singh (Managing Director at Agnitio Capital).

The discussion kicked off by mentioning the fact that all the people on stage have been working in the industry for more or less two decades and how immensely the industry has grown and changed in that time frame.

"In 2007 there was no mobile market," said Tähtinen. "The PC segment had become really small and the video game industry was mostly focused on console. Today, PC is bigger than consoles."

But the tough times the industry is going through, with more than 15,000 announced layoffs so far, are the reason why this panel took place. The big question, the panelists said, is where all these people will go.

"The obvious answer is that the industry is going to lose most of those people, who will choose to give up game development and find a more secure job," said Tähtinen.

But the situation is not the same everywhere. The panelists mentioned how right now the situation is probably particularly harsh in territories like the USA, where the financing situation is much less favorable than in the past, but the turmoil is felt almost everywhere.

"Denmark is also seeing lots of layoffs and studio closure," said Funday Games' Anders Leicht Rohde, "and it's a particularly rough situation because it's a small market, so names are piling up on a huge waiting list made of people who lost their jobs and new arrivals who get out of school and hope to get hired