The video game industry is still going through a phase of cost-cutting and restructuring, marked by redundancies, cancelled projects and sales. Yet the picture can look surprisingly healthy on paper: the numbers are in the green, the curves are rising and even employment appears to have edged up a little, despite the frequent waves of forced departures.
So how can both realities exist at once? Amir Satvat addressed the issue during a conference at Gamescom 2026. Satvat has built a reputation in the industry in recent years by trying to help workers across the sector, whether jobseekers or people recently laid off, find work in video games. He has also created a dedicated website, ASGC, for that purpose.
Why does the number of employees not seem to be falling?
As GamesIndustry reports, Satvat began by setting out the wider context: 2026 is expected to be one of the worst years for redundancies. By early August, more than 10,000 layoffs had already been recorded, more than in the whole of 2025.
Even so, the total number of people working in the sector has barely changed. Since 2022, it has in fact increased by 1%. Satvat estimates that around 750,000 people work directly or indirectly in video games, a figure well above many other estimates. “It’s because, in my opinion, people do not realise the scale of the job market in China,” he said.
This means the industry is not shrinking evenly. Rather, according to Satvat, what is happening is a “geographic transition”. For every person who loses their job, someone else is hired elsewhere in the world. Two-thirds of layoffs have taken place in North America, while in other regions the number of jobs is moving in a positive direction. That is the case in the Asia-Pacific region, where growth of 10% has been recorded, including 12% in China alone.
At the same time, studios making high-budget AAA games are increasingly relying on external development firms or contract workers, and therefore on much smaller in-house teams. “In 2022, half of the vacancies in the sector were in these AAA studios, today it is less than a third. By contrast, 10 to 15% of jobs are now in co-development companies.”
Why so many layoffs amid growth?
The global video game market in 2025 was worth $202 billion, up 9% on 2024. Of that, 56% of the revenue, or $113 billion, came from smartphone games alone. Even so, restructuring and job losses continue. Microsoft also saw another round in June.
According to Satvat, that is because 50 to 60% of this growth depends on just the 20 most popular games; for the rest, the situation is much more difficult. On PC, 79 games account for 80% of total play time. On smartphones, it is so hard for games to broaden their audience that the sector is concentrating on getting existing players to spend more. “The overall figures are good, but the data become less pleasant to read when you dig a little deeper,” the specialist said.
For studios and companies that are not among the winners, the challenge is to find ways to stay in the black, and that usually means layoffs and reorganisation.
Satvat said the industry is facing about twenty problems, including the issues that are discussed regularly: over-hiring and over-investment during the Covid period, changing player habits, and longer, more expensive development cycles.
But, he said, the most worrying are the difficulty of getting games noticed and uncertainty around artificial intelligence. “As far as I know, no one has a big plan or any sort of solution to deal with it. And failing to solve these difficulties would be a major obstacle for what comes next.”
An industry in rapid change
The picture that emerges is of a sector that remains financially large and, in some regions, still expanding, but one in which growth is concentrated, competition is fierce and employment is being reshaped. The result is a paradox: broad market figures may appear positive, while many workers continue to face instability, redundancies and a shifting geography of opportunity.