In a rare bit of positive news, Amir Satvat, a jobs quant, said he sees an improved outlook when it comes to layoffs in the game industry. Satvat is the only one making such forecasts, and he reduced the number of layoffs he expects to happen in the second half of the year.
If you haven’t been following, the game industry has been in a post-pandemic layoff rut because game companies hired too many folks in the pandemic boom and then saw a drop off in game playing as people went back to outdoor pursuits in post-pandemic times.
The result has been 8,098 layoffs in 2022, 10,137 in 2023, and 11,455 to date in 2024. Satvat recently estimated that the number of layoffs (based on his indicators) would be 4,463 in the second half of the year. But now he projects that the layoffs will be lower at 2,687 in the second half now, coming off a much better July than expected.
“Friends, with each week, the go-forward employment picture in games is looking better and better. We had a much better July than expected. Here is the revised forecast. Placement velocity is also coming in better than expected,” Satvat, who works in business development at Tencent, said in his LinkedIn post. “I know this does not magically make current employment challenges go away but it makes me very happy to report this.”
Satvat been aggregating game job data since 2022, and he has helped at least 2,000 people find jobs (at last count).