Game jobs champion Amir Satvat said his data shows that the average number of open game roles at a time, measured over the trailing 12 months, has increased for a third year in a row to 18,000 in November 2024, compared to 15,000 in March 2025 and 14,000 in August 2024.
This is part of an annual exercise Satvat, a general partner at 1Up Ventures, conducts on an apples-to-apples basis, to provide the deepest possible insights on global hiring.
“I assess the games jobs market as objectively and fairly as possible,” Satvat said in a post on LinkedIn. Over the past few weeks, I’ve checked and rechecked these numbers, revisiting my initial findings and validating the comparisons before reporting them. After that work, I’m glad finally to share some good news about the overall games jobs market.
I believe hiring will modestly outpace layoffs for a third consecutive year. That outlook does not diminish how difficult the layoffs have been, or their disproportionate impact on people and teams in the West. Those effects are real and should not be glossed over.
The global mix of open roles continues to change and it is driving hiring growth. From 2024 to 2026, China’s share of open roles has grown from 15% to 30%. Combined, APAC now accounts for 47%, roughly half, of all open games hiring in the world, up from 41% in 2025 and 31% in 2024.
Believe it not, North America excluding California has also grown, from 10% to 15%. The largest growth areas in that group are Quebec, British Columbia, Washington, New York, and Ontario, Satvat said.
California’s share has declined from 14% to 10% of global roles, a 30% decrease. Remote has also taken a big hit, from 15% to 4% of open hiring. I count remote purely as truly global remote roles, and not remote within region.
“I track roles individually and check their status every day. When a role disappears, I can’t always know exactly why,” Satvat said. “I look for corroborating evidence to distinguish actual closures from temporary source gaps and ghost listings, but I can’t claim certainty about every individual case. I’m confident this is a careful relative comparison over time, not a perfect account of why each posting disappeared.”
He added, “I am also confident that most disappearances are because of actual hiring. I have used the same methodology daily for four years.”
Keep in mind that Satvat estimates total actual hiring in the games industry each year. That figure is often higher than the number of roles open at any given time because of turnover and hiring throughout the year.
“I hope this information gives readers some confidence about the labor strength of our industry in a tough time and accurate insights as to how the geographic mix of these opportunities is changing,” Satvat said. “Thanks for your patience as this annual exercise takes a great deal of time and effort.”
Satvat is the founder of the Always Supporting the Games Community, and he recently celebrated four years of posting game jobs and tallying game data for the benefit of the gaming community.
Satvat’s journey began in November 2022 as a one-person effort born from his lifelong dream of showing the worldwide games community how much he loved and appreciated them. He got his first gaming job at Amazon at the age of 39, and then he moved to a business development director role at Tencent.
He spoke last week at our GamesBeat Next 2026 event on Tuesday as a general partner at 1Up Ventures, the game venture capital firm started by ex-Microsoft gaming leader Ed Fries.
In a LinkedIn post a week ago, Satvat reminisced about the past four years, during which his game job data helped more than 5,400 people find jobs in gaming. ASGC.gg has become the largest support community in video games.
It has more than 700,000 monthly active users across its various touchpoints; more than seven million lifetime viewers of the content; 5,400+ job placements; six in 10 polled members say ASGC significantly helped them; tens of thousands of member messages answered; and 110,000+ coaching chats and reviews.
On LinkedIn, Satvat and the community have more than 158,224 LinkedIn followers (No. 1 LI games content creator); He has also been a LinkedIn Games Top Voice since 2023; there are 21,631 Discord members (No. 11 games career Discord); 20,487 ASGC LinkedIn followers;
15,000 unique weekly users of the jobs workbook alone; and 60+ free community resources.