Game jobs champion Amir Satvat estimated that game industry layoffs dropped from 15,631 in 2024 to 9,053 in 2025.
That’s a significant improvement from year to year, and it shows that the industry is getting closer to its equilibrium of equal hiring and firing in a given year. But it also illustrates how much pain there still is in the disruption of the lives of game industry employees.
Satvat’s estimate for 2026 is for about 7,500 layoffs, again showing a gradual reduction in game industry instability. For comparison, he esitmated layoffs of 10,500 in 2023 and 8,500 in 2022. Satvat’s estimate is based on what others report publicly and what he learns from 5,000 companies in the game industry — via posting his jobs data.
The only other real competitive data, based on reporting about layoffs comes from the Game Industry Layoff Tracker, which estimates based on announced numbers. The tracker estimates layoffs were 5,300 in 2025, 14,600 in 2024, 10,500 in 2023, and 8,500 in 2022. You’ll note that Satvat’s estimates rely on the tracker for 2023 and 2022 data.
“We ended with a 93% accurate layoff prediction for 2025 to our forecast with only two weeks of data on January 15, 2025. I am pleased that our approach is working so well but totally displeased that there were so many cuts,” Satvat said in a post on Linkedin.
His early projection for just a couple of days into the new year is 7,500 (high, high std dev).
“From what I see through ASGC’s work with this data, there are a few areas where other publicly available layoff figures can understandably vary from our own, particularly where we are sometimes able to access more complete or directly confirmed information,” Satvat said.
Here’s the rest of his post:
1. Some entries remain incomplete
Roughly a third of commonly cited layoff events, on the order of 50 out of approximately 150 situations, are listed elsewhere with question marks, ranges, or no figures at all. In many cases, our community is able to help clarify portions of these gaps through direct confirmation.
2. Not all layoffs become publicly reported
A meaningful number of layoffs never enter the public news cycle. These can include quieter reductions, regional cuts, or contractor or game specific teams within larger restructures that are not broken out publicly and may therefore be absent from public trackers.
3. Reported figures may represent partial counts
Even when layoffs are reported, the numbers can reflect only part of the total impact, particularly when games teams are included within broader tech or media reductions and are not fully itemized.
4. Separating games and non games cuts within conglomerates
In diversified organizations, workforce reductions are often announced at the corporate level without clear separation between games and non games functions. As a result, attributing a precise portion of these reductions to games teams can be challenging and may differ depending on available disclosures and interpretation.
5. Aggregates may vary depending on methodology
In a small number of cases, headline totals do not fully align with the underlying line item data. For example, using one public tracker’s own 2025 entries, summing the raw figures produces 5,931 compared to an aggregate figure of 5,300 shown elsewhere. This explains a small portion of the observed gaps.
I hope we come in as low as possible in 2026. We will help all we can.