The gaming industry is caught in a curious—and unsettling—paradox. Studios are trimming staff even when their titles are hitting big targets. An estimated 45,000 game industry jobs were lost between 2022-2025, nearly all of them creative roles.
Meanwhile, upper layers of management often remain intact, leaving the organisation top-heavy and the makers disproportionately exposed. I personally think this is the result of the natural tendency for middle and upper management not to consider themselves as part of the cost/efficiency analysis equation. This natural tendency, over the years, has lead to game company staffs full of bean counters and not much else. I liken it to an elephant riding a go-kart. Though the effect isn’t isolated to the game industry, it’s particularly prevalent there.
Consider the case of Massive Entertainment, part of Ubisoft and known for The Division franchise: despite committing to major upcoming titles and tech platforms, it announced a “voluntary career transition programme” aimed at trimming roles that weren’t assigned to new projects.
Then there’s Starbreeze Entertainment, developer of Payday, cutting staff even while attacking its next major release head-on.
In short: success doesn’t guarantee stability—and in fact sometimes marks the moment when studios shift gears and begin shedding talent.
The Root of the Pressure
Several factors feed this trend:
- Budget escalation & expectations: The cost of making “AAA” games continues to climb. One industry veteran asked: if you spend hundreds of millions and spend years building something visually amazing, but the fun isn’t there, is it worth it? AAA games now cost hundreds of millions of dollars, pushing the tipping point way off the end of the scale in terms of required profitability.
- Creator roles squeezed: While publishers focus on bottom-line metrics, many studios deprioritise roles perceived as “less directly resalable” (e.g., QA, junior designers or art roles) in favour of larger strategic or managerial overhead.
- Flooded marketplace: With digital distribution removing barriers to entry, thousands of games arrive every year—and many fail to recoup even the minimal fee required to enter storefronts. That raises risk both for studios and the creatives within them.
- Talent models not aligned with growth: When a studio expands and then pauses between major projects, that “in-between” time often triggers the first round of layoffs—precisely when non-senior staff are hardest to keep.
The flooded marketplace problem is present in the publishing industry as well.
The democratization of the creative process, enabled by turnkey publishing software and delivery services, combined with the tendency for big media corporations to pull back from having to invest in the creative process themselves, has resulted in a vast sea of mediocrity. This makes it hard to shine even if what you’ve produced is the highest quality.
Why It Matters to Makers
If you’re a creator—modeler, animator, writer, composer or coder—you’re smack in the cross-hairs of this dynamic.
- Your job may feel essential during production, but once shipping is done and the next project isn’t greenlit yet, you can suddenly become expendable.
- Creative control and autonomy shrink as studios emphasise “safe” outcomes and stakeholder oversight. The very thing that drew many of us into the business—the chance to build something bold—becomes risk.
- Entry-level and mid-level roles are being hit hardest: new entrants find fewer pathways, and existing makers face longer waits for new gigs or shifts in project direction.
Yet, amid all this turbulence there are studios doing something different—ones that appear to value their creative core, retain talent consciously, and calibrate growth around sustainability instead of expansion-for-its-own-sake.
Five Studios That Offer a Better Model
Here are five development houses worth watching, because they appear to buck the trend in one way or another.
1. Ninja Theory
Based in Cambridge, UK, Ninja Theory decided early on that the blockbuster “mega-budget” cycle wasn’t the only game in town. They pioneered an “independent triple-A” model: smaller teams, tight budgets, high production values, creative freedom.
By retaining smaller teams and focusing on craft, they have built a culture where creative roles aren’t first on the chopping block.
2. Supergiant Games
An indie studio in San Francisco that has grown slowly (from seven people onward) and kept turnover extremely low. Their titles (Bastion, Transistor, Hades) are examples of how tightly-focused teams can punch above their weight.
For makers who don’t want to be swallowed by an ever-increasing headcount, this is a compelling model.
3. Remedy Entertainment
Based in Finland; they’ve adopted sustainability and creative autonomy as core pillars. After the success of Control, Remedy shifted to owning their IP, self-publishing select titles, and maintaining manageable team structures rather than going full “mono-giant studio” scale. They give an example that even a mid-sized studio can choose steadiness over boom-and-bust.
4. Iron Galaxy Studios
While less famous for flagship AAA titles, Iron Galaxy has spoken openly about strong retention (average tenure ~5 years) and culture that values “bringing your whole self to work”. For makers, that kind of stable environment is increasingly rare—and thus noteworthy.
5. Nintendo (as development culture exemplar)
Though not immune to industry pressures, data suggest Nintendo maintains high employee retention and lower turnover compared to many peers.
Nintendo has been their own worst enemy in other ways, teaming up with the Pokemon Company in both trying to patent game mechanics used by other company’s designers for decades in their battle to protect their Pokemon franchise from Palworld. Nintendo’s patents are widely thought to be so overly broad that they might dismantle the entire game industry.
They’re claiming that gameplay created by modders that might invalidate their claims by demonstrating prior art don’t count because they’re not in proper games. One US IP expert Kirk Sigmon says that here, Nintendo is “so wrong it hurts“, and that they don’t think it’ll pass the laugh test in court.
Wrap-up: A Hopeful Note
Yes—the industry is in a pressure cooker. Yes—the makers are vulnerable. But this isn’t a dead end. For folks like you who model, sculpt, animate, compose, write: there are signals of a shift.
- The loud blockbuster-machine is getting scrutiny: as one producer put it, if it’s not fun, it’s not worth the investment. That opens space for smaller-team, craft-led, risk-aware production.
- The oversupply of games may be a wild card—but for those with strong ideas and distinctive creative voices, it means there’s potential upside in being agile and visible rather than buried in a giant pipeline.
- The studios above demonstrate that talent retention and culture matter. They show pathways where ‘making games’ isn’t just about shipping, but about building something sustainable for the people who build them.
If you’re a creative, this is a moment to lean into your uniqueness: the maker’s voice, cross-discipline skills, the ability to bring vision to life. Focus less on the “biggest budget” and more on the “clearest vision”. Build relationships with studios that value craft. Hybrid skill-sets, held by people who can function in more than one creative area, gives workers an edge in a shifting market.
The narrative I take away is this: studios will keep shedding roles as long as the model assumes growth = more bodies. But the more alternative paths open (craft-led teams, smaller budgets, niche audiences, meaningful creative experience), the more chances there are for makers to step into roles that aren’t disposable.
The future isn’t entirely rosy—but it’s not doomed either. For those who make, there is room to act. There are studios showing a better way. The key is to seek them out—and bring your best self. Because when the makers are treated as central, the games tend to be stronger—and so does the industry.
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