GDC Survey: 41% of devs affected by layoffs in 2024
The Game Developers Conference released its annual State of Games Industry survey today, which found that one in ten developers were laid off in 2024. Overall, 41% of developers were impacted by layoffs last year compared to 35% in 2023.
In partnership with market intelligence firm Omdia and Game Developer, the GDC State of Games Industry report surveyed over 3,000 developers on their experiences of current conditions affecting the industry. These include layoffs, job roles, which platforms they're using, working hours, and generative AI.
Going back to layoffs, 29% of respondents saw their direct colleagues affected by redundancy than staff in other teams and departments, which was 18%.
The majority of those surveyed cited restructuring, declining revenue, and marketing shifts as the main reason for layoffs.
GDC asked developers why they thought layoffs continue to affect the industry, with many placing "the blame on specific issues like Covid-era overexpansion, rising production costs, declining player interest, unrealistic expectations for the 'next big hit', poor leadership and mismanagement."
While union support among developers remained relatively unchanged during the ongoing wave of layoffs, one-fifth of developers said they'd talked about unionising over the past 12 months. 29% said their companies were supportive of these talks, while 19% were mixed and 12% opposed.
The job role most affected by redundancies in 2024 was in game narrative at 19%, despite this segment seeing the most year-on-year growth from 14% in 2024 to 17% today.
There was a decrease in developers working for AAA studios, dropping from 18% to 15%. Of that percentage, almost half of developers work at studios with over 250 employees. In comparison, over half of indie developers work for studios with 20 staff or fewer.
The majority of developers continue to work 40 hours or less per week, though this has dropped from 64% last year to 57%.
13% of those surveyed are working more than 51 hours per week
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