In recent months, a significant part of the gaming agenda has been layoffs. February was no exception. According to the Game Industry Layoffs portal, during the month, gaming companies fired or announced layoffs of at least 2,027 people.
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For comparison, in February 2023, five times fewer gaming specialists lost their jobs — 386 people.
It is worth noting that there are gaps in the Game Industry Layoffs data. In some cases, the portal does not know how many people have been fired from a particular company. For example, the site does not indicate the number of laid-off employees from Build a Rocket Boy and Cloud Imperium Games, since the studios did not publicly disclose the figures. Also, the statistics do not take into account layoffs at Blackbird Interactive, Popcore Games and a number of other companies. Therefore, in reality, the total number of dismissed specialists should be even higher.
Top 5 Gaming Companies with the Highest number of Laid-off Employees in February, according to Game Industry Layoffs:
1. Sony — 900 people;
2. Electronic Arts — 670 people;
3. Wildlife Studios — 130 people;
4. SuperMassive Games — 90 people;
5. Hidden Path Entertainment — 44 people.
Recall that 5,9 thousand specialists lost their jobs in January. Thus, in the first two months of 2024 alone, the number of layoffs in the gaming industry reached almost 8 thousand people. At this rate, 2024 will soon be able to surpass 2023 in terms of the number of layoffs — for the whole of last year, gaming companies cut 10,466 people.