Hiring may finally be matching the layoff rate in games | Amir Satvat

For a solid 30 months — perhaps the worst in gaming history — there have been more layoffs than hiring in gaming. That may be ending.

Amir Satvat, the game job resource champion who is bringing transparency to game jobs, said in a new post that he believes we have reached breakeven between hiring and layoffs in games in January, 2025. This is a big deal, as in the past 2.5 years, the game industry laid off 34,000 people.

In a post on LinkedIn, Satvat wrote the chart above is a 6-week trailing sum of layoffs in the games industry. At its peak in the first quarter of 2024, it exceeded 6,000. But since the fourth quarter of 2024, that number has remained below 700.

“For a while, I’ve said I hoped we would hit breakeven, where six-week trailing hiring outpaces six-week trailing layoffs,” Satvat said. “Initially, I predicted this for 12/2024, then adjusted to 1/2025. I now believe we reached breakeven this month. That doesn’t mean it’s permanent, but hiring velocity is trending upward.”