It's just the Embracer group as their idea was to just buy up all the independent studios to package them and sell to a big player (MS, Sony, Amazon, etc.) at a higher price than they purchased for.
No value-add finance scheme essentially. Interest rates are higher and they can't get a company to buy out their portfolio, so they're now shuttering all the great studios they bought up. Thousands of hardworking devs are out of jobs and dozens of games are dead because some Swedes wanted to make a buck off of other people's effort.
Higher rate environment, money isn't cheap anymore and companies can't keep up their rate of growth. It's not just in the gamedev industry, it's hit almost every industry.
Here is a good article if you're interested in long-form reading.
TL;DR despite a good year for games, revenue is stagnant in nominal dollars and is declining in real dollars due to inflation. High interest rates also make financing development much more risky. That's leading to a lot of companies cutting staff and canceling projects.
Is something going on in the games industry or is this business as usual?
It's just the Embracer group as their idea was to just buy up all the independent studios to package them and sell to a big player (MS, Sony, Amazon, etc.) at a higher price than they purchased for.
No value-add finance scheme essentially. Interest rates are higher and they can't get a company to buy out their portfolio, so they're now shuttering all the great studios they bought up. Thousands of hardworking devs are out of jobs and dozens of games are dead because some Swedes wanted to make a buck off of other people's effort.
True but riot games and activision blizzard also doing mass layoffs???
That was always Riot's plan to overhire first and lay off a portion. Blizzard's cleaning house after the acquisition by MS.
Ghoulish still, but done for different reasons.
Higher rate environment, money isn't cheap anymore and companies can't keep up their rate of growth. It's not just in the gamedev industry, it's hit almost every industry.
Here is a good article if you're interested in long-form reading.
TL;DR despite a good year for games, revenue is stagnant in nominal dollars and is declining in real dollars due to inflation. High interest rates also make financing development much more risky. That's leading to a lot of companies cutting staff and canceling projects.