[Lazare]

I sympathise with the author and agree that there are some pretty terrible stories and numbers floating around, but the unstated premise of the article seems to be:

The game industry is monolithic, it has recently undergone a sweeping change, but no further change is possible, therefore it is safe to make a linear projection based on what's happened over the last six months out to infinity. And I'm skeptical that those are good assumptions to make.

> Epic Games in September laid off over 800 people, almost 15% of the entire company. Epic is one of the most successful and profitable game companies that exist. [...] For years, every other game company has tried to copy Fortnite, and mostly failed at the attempt. This is not enough to ensure job security

Okay, yeah, that's interesting, and no doubt traumatic for the people who were fired, their colleagues we have so far avoided it, and for devs working in the broader industry, and I am sympathetic. But: Sometimes companies overhire, sometimes corporate priorities shift, sometimes a company decides to reorient towards a leaning production model. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't. There isn't any industry where overall profitability is, alone, enough to ensure job security. (And I'd also suggest that putting these layoffs in the context of the broader tech industry and the end of zero interest rates might also yield some useful insights...)

In any case, if Epic fires a bunch of devs, and profitability drops, then that was a mistake and they will try to staff back up. And if it doesn't (or rises) then that suggests that game development is actually more profitable than previously expected and individual game devs are more productive than previous realised, which will of course be cold comfort for the devs laid off, but suggests that overall employment and compensation across the broader industry will be tracking upwards not downwards, which is good news for game devs as a whole in the medium to long term.

To be clear: I do not want for one moment to defend the big studios (who appear, by and large, to have C-suites full of pod people who delight in human misery), or to minimise the very real pain suffered by gave devs, but the idea that an entire industry can somehow run off a cliff in a way which is permenantly non-recoverable is...well, let's say it's a bold claim that needs extraordinary support.

> Games in 2024 and 2025 will be a few labors of love...

Yeah, plausible. But what do you think is going to happen in 2026 and 2027?

[JKCalhoun]

> therefore it is safe to make a linear projection based on what's happened over the last six months out to infinity

Why linear? Why not logarithmic?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_crash_of_1983

[TillE]

We're talking about a hundred billion dollar entertainment industry. Video games have come a long, long way from the odd circumstances in 1983 which notably only affected the nascent industry in America, not Japan or Europe.