A 100,000 years lost. That’s how many years of experience the game industry will lose by the end of the year, as veterans have been laid off and left the industry, according to Amir Satvat.
Satvat, a game jobs champion who has helped thousands of people find jobs, has analyzed the data from his game job resources and come up with that grim estimate.
“Amir, how much experience have we lost from games since 2022?” Satvat wrote in a post on LinkedIn. “It’s a question I get asked often. I never rushed to answer it because it deserved real thought. Now I can.”
With a few years of data confirmed and four estimated, the 100,000 number will likely be hit by the end of the year, he estimated. And he said it represents the years of experience of people who have left the game industry in the last few years amid the spread of layoffs.
Based on the latest news from the industry and his own projections, Satvat believes that about 6,247 people are believed to have lost their jobs so far this year.
Thanks to the data supplied by people in his community, he said he can see the average years of games experience people had when they were laid off. He also tracked the number of cuts and how many people return to games versus shift to other industries or remain unemployed.
“Based on all of that, and rounding for clarity, I believe that by the end of this year we will have lost 100,000 years of video games experience,” Satvat said.
That number is the equivalent of 40 full studios. Each with 500 people. Each with five years of average games experience.
“And it gets crazier when you look closer. I never share specifics, to protect our members, but it’s unbelievable how many nearly complete teams, how many key leaders from top franchises, are just out there,” he wrote. “From the biggest companies. Sitting on the sidelines.”
He noted the loss of all of that talent and how many game studios or games they could have made. But he noted the financing is brutally tight. And many of these folks are high-cost senior talent that studios are hesitant to pick up.
“So instead, they sit. Or move on. Or wait,” Satvat wrote. “It’s just nuts. It’s just nuts.”
When you look at who has left the industry, it comes out to about 44% of the total “games years” of all people laid off from 2022 to 2025, he said.
Also, Game Dev Heroes gave Satvat its first-ever Industry Impact award on July 8. Congratulations to Amir. In a thank-you note, he credited his community.