General Gaming "The Bittersweet Feeling Of Seeing Your Game Revealed After Getting Laid Off"

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

The Bittersweet Feeling Of Seeing Your Game Revealed After Getting Laid Off - Aftermath

AFTERMATH.SITE

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"Seeing the trailer go up and the title get announced made me feel empty inside"

 

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Going into this year’s Summer Game Fest, the vibes were rancid. Over 10,000 game developers have been laid off since the start of 2024, more than in all of 2023. How, with such a dark cloud hanging over the industry, do you strike up the band and roll out the annual hype parade? Geoff Keighley did it with a smile – or at least an unnerving rictus grin. Laid-off game developers watching along at home had a much harder time, especially as their own work appeared on screen.

 

Nearly half the companies involved with Keighley’s flagship show this year suffered layoffs of some kind, while adjacent showcases like Microsoft’s were haunted by the specter of historically brutal cuts. Even surprises – like a tease of Destiny 2’s future following its exceedingly well-received The Final Shape expansion – were colored by this unfortunate trend. Developers who worked on many of the projects shown were forced to confront uncomfortable, bittersweet emotions as their work was celebrated by fans and companies alike.

 

"I want to celebrate my friends and their efforts going live, but [that’s] also coupled with the knowledge of the pain they went through to get stuff out the door being understaffed," Uriah Belletto, an ex-dungeon/raids test lead at Bungie who was laid off earlier this year, told Aftermath. "It's like a bad breakup, and my friends are hanging with my ex. I can't really engage without hurt." 

 

A former artist at Blizzard, who was granted anonymity over concerns that speaking out could jeopardize future job prospects, found themselves battling a slightly different set of mixed emotions: On one hand, they’re proud of the work they did on Diablo IV, a gruesome trailer for which wound up being one of the standout moments of Microsoft’s showcase. On the other hand, those feelings will always be tinged with anger toward the company.

 

“I’m still really connected to the project, and I feel like some of my best work is in the expansion, but there’s some kind of bitterness there that’s associated with the layoffs and the callous way Microsoft went about them,” the artist told Aftermath. “They came in promising to bring back the old Blizzard and enable teams to do great things, but then one morning I woke up to a group meeting with HR and a slow, cascading shut down of all my accounts and access. Diablo still means a lot to me, and the people who work on it are some of the most incredible people I’ve ever met, but now it’s associated with a feeling of loss, and seeing the celebrations around it – and other games, for that matter – just makes me feel tired instead of excited.” 

 

 

[Bacon]

I couldn't care less about this, honestly. I kinda just wanna say, "Who asked?" lol

[skillzdadirecta]

I emphathize for real but honestly this business, just like the entertainment business, is a gig industry. You're going to go from job to job, project to project. That's just the reality of the business. mIf you're lucky you can stay with one company for years on end but without a union, these guys are at the mercy of these big companies.

[stepee]

Yeah, I emphasize, sucks being laid off. I will say I can get where someone like Bacon is coming from though also. 
 

The hyper focus of gaming “journalism” and on resetera etc on the labor side of things puts devs on this kind of weird pedestal where it’s like they are precious and need special protection but like…this is everyone that isn’t rich?

 

Everybody gets laid off, everyone has to work OT to get higher up, everybody has to switch jobs, work hard, doesn’t get paid what they are worth etc etc etc - I don’t think people who work in game development are in any particularly special situation. I never got an article when I was laid off.

 

I don’t mind if that’s what people want to talk about, it’s not bad, calling attention to how corporations are bad is generally good.

 

But I am also a bit ehhh at some of it and when like say DF goes a few weeks and it’s all about socioeconomic and job statistics..that’s not what I’m trying to use that time for. I have times I go and read up on those kind of issues and from people who know a lot more and have a more rounded view of America’s job market than people who write about video games.

[AbsolutSurgen]

I got laid off by an automaker.  Lost my company car.

 

One of the first things I bought was one of the vehicles I had worked on.