Chris Deering, former president of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE), has pushed back against the idea that large-scale layoffs in the industry are caused by corporate greed.
In a recent episode of Simon Parkin My perfect console podcast, Deering shared his thoughts on the last two years of staff cuts and studio closures. Citing Sony London (which stop in May), noted that “if consumers aren't willing to shell out money for the latest game, it's going to be hard to justify spending money on the next one.”
Layoffs in the video game industry
Since the beginning of 2023, there have been at least two rounds of layoffs per week at studios of various sizes. As of this writing, there have been 11,540 Estimated Layoffs for 2024 and a total of 22,040 cuts between 2023 and now.
In February, Sony laid off 900 PlayStation Developers in various proprietary studios and cancelled multiple projects to leave room for “future growth.” More recently, it was demolished Firewalking Concord just two weeks after launch.
Regardless of how things turned out, Deering believes that the game's development “[won’t be] a life of poverty or limitation. That's still where the action is. These things sometimes pick up much faster than you might think, when everything is so precarious.”
Deering further compared the situation to the pandemic and said that developers will have to “figure out how to get through this” before their “[presumably] the “decent” severance package expires.
Her advice? Stay up to date with industry news and “drive an Uber, or go find a cheap place to live and go to the beach for a year.”