According to this year's Big Game Industry Employment Survey21% of game developers in Europe were affected by layoffs between 2023 and 2024. Participants were asked if they had changed jobs in the past year: of these, 15% were fired and found a new job, and 6.2% were similarly fired and are still looking for work. … Read more
Game developers had mixed reactions to the advancement of generative artificial intelligence in video game development. Some are eager for machine learning-based tools to help solve complex problems, others are tired of being told that AI will replace workers or make their lives easier (when it could simply create more jobs). One issue with implementing … Read more
Valve has updated the Steam developer portal with a new edit section dedicated to anti-cheat software. Going forward, it will require developers to disclose whether their game uses anti-cheat technology like PunkBuster and force them to do so if they use client-side, kernel-mode anti-cheat. The change in stance on kernel-mode anti-cheat follows years of back … Read more
The recent boom of independent studies spun by long-time game developers it came with many advantages, including a greater degree of freedom than its bigger triple-A brothers. Now, some argue that this freedom provides the opportunity for their game to attract more attention and succeed among players. Several developers spoke Bloomberg about the benefits of … Read more
According to the Communications Workers of America (CWA), quality assurance workers at Activision Blizzard recently went on strike to protest the company's return-to-work mandate (RTO). ON Friday 25 Octoberthe QA team (based in Eden Prairie, Minnesota) mobilized to secure work-from-home (WFH) accommodations. The team has worked on several Call of Duty games (including the newly … Read more
They spoke to former developers from the Australian Irrational Games team PCGamer about the studio's attempt to revive 2K's strategy series XCOM with a first-person shooter. This shooter predates the 2012 Firaxis reboot XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and Irrational co-founder and Australian leader Jon Chey, it was a compromise of sorts. He said 2K “injected a … Read more
On October 14, 2014 I featured my first freelance story for what was then called the “Gama Sutra”. 10 years and a changing of the guard later, I'm now a senior editor for Game Developer, which, sorry, is a name 10 times better than a vaguely appropriate sexual pun. Very few video game journalists make … Read more
The Game Developer Collective recently conducted a survey on virtual reality gaming. Of those surveyed, 56% believe the market is “currently declining or stagnant.” 38% believe in the second, 18% in the first. In contrast, 23% believe the market is growing modestly over time. As with consoles, the price of VR headsets represents a significant … Read more
Contraction is eliminating a badge that indicated game developers in a chat stream. The removal goes into effect today, October 21 (or “soon after”), and accounts with the badge will automatically lose it without any input required. The badge was first introduced in 2022 as a way for developers to “be more visible and auditable … Read more
Several exes Supercell the developers have founded a new multiplayer-focused studio called Antihero, opening offices in both Finland and Barcelona. As reported by Mobilegamer.bizthe studio was founded by former Supercell creative director Brice Laville Saint-Martin, alongside former Brawl Stars senior game designer Frank Yan and former King technical director Andre Parodi. Ubisoft game designer Hadrian … Read more