Gaming · Thursday, 3 September 2026

01 Briefing what happened

The games industry is cutting 14,666 jobs this year and has more workers than it did in 2022

Gaming 1 min 33 sources

More than two thirds of the cuts land in North America while hiring rises across Asia, and the growth paying for all of it is piling into twenty games.

14,666

job cuts now expected across games this year, up from a forecast of 7,500

2025 ended with about 9,200 and the record, in 2024, was 15,631 [1]

750,000

people working in games worldwide, slightly more than in 2022

the total grew under 1% in four years, and the growth is outside North America [1]

chance a new graduate with no games experience is hired within twelve months

one or two years of experience lifts the same figure to 30% [1]

50-60%

of all games revenue going to the twenty biggest games

on PC, 79 titles take 80% of the hours people spend playing [1]

The lead story — what happened

A researcher who tracks games job cuts has nearly doubled his forecast for this year, from about 7,500 to 14,666. [1]
Around 10,140 cuts had already been announced by 11 August, more than in the whole of 2025. [1]
The industry still employs roughly 750,000 people, slightly more than in 2022, so the work is moving rather than vanishing. [1]
More than two thirds of the cuts landed in North America, where he counted 25,000 lost roles. [1]
Job openings across Asia and the Pacific rose 10% over the same stretch, with 12% growth in China. Europe stayed flat. [1]
Money and jobs came apart because the top 20 games now take between half and 60% of everything players spend. [1]
On PC the pile-up is sharper still: 79 titles account for 80% of the hours people play. [1]
The door at the bottom has closed. A new graduate with no games experience has a 4% chance of being hired within a year. [1]
Adverts for the same job now ask for three more years of experience, because people who were laid off are applying for it. [1]
Microsoft's Xbox division is cutting 3,200 jobs. Staff at Bethesda say careers of two and three decades ended in two-minute meetings. [2][3]
He named two problems nobody has a plan for: too many games for any of them to be found, and what AI does next. A record 720 games launched on Steam in a single week. [1][4]

Who is involved

Amir Satvat

a games industry researcher who runs a free help service for people looking for work; he tracks the layoffs and gave the keynote [1]
Microsoft's Xbox division

Microsoft's games arm, the console maker behind Xbox; it is removing 3,200 jobs by 2027, 1,600 of them at once [2]
Bethesda Game Studios

the Microsoft-owned team behind Skyrim and Fallout; its staff were among those cut [2][3]
Game studios in China

the main place the work is going; openings there grew 12% while North America shed roles [1]

What is pushing on this

Job cuts High↑

14,666 expected this year, near the 2024 record [1]

Hiring outside North America Building↑

openings up 10% across Asia and the Pacific, 12% in China [1]

The squeeze on new entrants High↑

eleven people looking for every hire in North America [1]

Money reaching smaller studios Easing↓

twenty games take half of what players spend [1]

How it unfolded

2017-2022 games adds roughly 150,000 net jobs in five years [1]
December 2025 Satvat forecasts about 7,500 job cuts for 2026 [1]
6 July 2026 Microsoft's Xbox division announces 3,200 cuts, 1,600 immediately [2]
11 August 2026 about 10,140 cuts already announced this year, more than all of 2025 [1]
Last week Satvat revises the year's forecast to 14,666 at the Gamescom developer conference in Germany [1]

Where this points

Watch the entry-level adverts rather than the layoff count: the reset ends when jobs stop asking for three more years of experience than they used to. [1]

The rest of the day

23 more stories on this beat.

Each with its own sources. None of these is a link to the story above.

02
Saudi state fund takes Savvy's chair directly

Brian Ward is stepping down as chief executive of Savvy Games Group, Saudi Arabia's roughly $38bn games investment arm, after five years of buying studios. His interim replacement is Turqi Alnowaiser, deputy governor of the Public Investment Fund, the Saudi state fund that owns Savvy. [5][6][7]

Why it matters — The outside executive who sat between the state and the game companies it owns is gone, weeks after the same fund led the $55bn buyout of Electronic Arts.
03
Don't Nod starts another round of cuts

The French studio behind Life is Strange announced a transformation plan on Monday, blaming profound changes in the industry's economics. Its statement names a job-preservation plan and talks with the staff union at a meeting today. [8]

Why it matters — The company has not said how many jobs are at risk. That number comes out of a union meeting rather than a press release.
04
Bethesda staff describe the Xbox cuts

Developers at Bethesda Game Studios told the Guardian that careers of two and three decades ended in meetings lasting two minutes. Two union representatives said they doubt the studio can hold its old quality with who is left. [2][3]

Why it matters — It puts faces on the lead's numbers: the cuts hit the studio behind Skyrim and Fallout, not only the weak projects.
05
A record 720 games launched on Steam in a week

Between 24 and 30 August, 720 games went on sale on Steam, about four an hour, tracked by ICO Partners. Around 530 of them have fewer than ten player reviews. [4]

Why it matters — Steam released 436 games in the whole of 2013. Almost all of this week's releases will never be found by anyone.
06
Nexus Mods buys SteamDB

Nexus Mods, which hosts player-made game modifications, is buying SteamDB, the site that tracks every version and price change on Steam. Nexus says it wants the build history so mods can tell when a game update will break them. [9]

Why it matters — Two volunteer-built services that the PC scene relies on are now under one owner, and neither is Valve.
07
Sony faces $7.85m payout over digital prices

A US federal court has given preliminary approval to a near-$8m settlement covering people who bought digital PlayStation games that were also sold as retail download codes, between April 2019 and December 2023. The case argues Sony's rules let it set digital prices without competition. [10]

Why it matters — It is a separate case from the ownership suit in which Sony is arguing that reasonable buyers already know they do not own their digital games. [11]
08
GTA 6 preview tops Netflix worldwide

The 30-minute Grand Theft Auto 6 preview reached 31.1 million views on Netflix in four days, the streaming service's most-watched title of the week, and led its English-language film list in 87 of 93 countries. [12]

Why it matters — A games advert out-drew every film on the service, which is why the console maker below has stopped paying for adverts of its own.
09
PS5 Pro resale prices reach $1,400

Major US retailers ran out of the PS5 Pro after the Grand Theft Auto 6 preview, and other sellers listed it at up to $1,400 against Sony's $899 price. [13]

Why it matters — The game does not come out until November. The hardware is already being priced on it.
10
Sony earns 59% more per player than in 2018

Average yearly revenue per active PlayStation user rose from 23,580 yen in the 2018 financial year to 37,485 yen in 2025, about $230 more, according to analyst Daniel Ahmad. Sony's chief executive says the company no longer markets the PS5 aggressively. [14][15]

Why it matters — Higher subscription tiers, more add-on buying and dearer hardware did what a bigger audience used to do.
11
Square Enix denies going-private report

The Japanese magazine Sentaku reported that the Final Fantasy maker was looking at taking itself off the stock market, and the shares rose nearly 12%. Square Enix said on Tuesday that no such thing is being considered. [16]

Why it matters — A rumour alone moved the price 12%, which is a measure of how normal buyouts have become in games this year.
12
CD Projekt profit jumps 37%

The Polish maker of The Witcher reported half-year net profit of 249.1m zlotys, about $66.7m, beating forecasts, on revenue up 23%. Licensing its characters to other companies was a big part of it. [17]

Why it matters — It is one of the few large studios growing without an owner behind it, and it is doing it partly by renting out its worlds.
13
Witcher 4 runs on every console already

CD Projekt says The Witcher 4, due in 2028, already launches on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X, unlike Cyberpunk 2077, which was built PC-first and shipped broken on consoles. Its co-chief says the studio is not worried about rumoured next-generation console delays. [18][19]

Why it matters — The fix for a disastrous launch was not more testing at the end. It was refusing to let the game only work in one place.
14
Supercell to close Metacore deal this month

Supercell, the Finnish studio behind Clash Royale, expects its purchase of fellow Finnish studio Metacore to complete at the end of September. Terms are not being disclosed. Metacore made Merge Mansion, a puzzle game that keeps selling to the same players for years. [20]

Why it matters — Supercell reported revenue down 4% last year and is doubling what it spends on new games while most of the industry cuts.
15
Saudi broadcaster opens a game studio

MBC, a large Saudi broadcaster that the country's Public Investment Fund took a 54% stake in during 2025, has started a games arm with a first title, 1001 Threads of Mizan. Its head says the studio has a policy against using generative AI. [21]

Why it matters — The same state fund is now both the biggest buyer of existing studios and a builder of new ones.
16
Double Fine crowdfunds after Microsoft let it go

Double Fine, the Psychonauts studio Microsoft released this summer, has launched a crowdfunding campaign for a two-week game jam that will become a finished game. A stretch goal promising Brutal Legend 2 sits at $100m, a figure Eurogamer reads as a joke. [22][23]

Why it matters — A studio that was owned by one of the richest companies on earth is now asking players directly for its budget.
17
Star Wars Zero Company ships broken

The tactics game reviewed at 85 on Metacritic and arrived with heavy stutter and bugs on PC. Its studio, Bit Reactor, had furloughed most of its staff before launch, so it is not clear who fixes it. [24][25]

Why it matters — This is what a furlough looks like from the player's side: the patch that a game like this normally gets may never be written.
18
Doom DLC was made in three or four months

A former producer at id Software says most of the Doom: The Dark Ages add-on was built in three or four months, with two months of 12-hour days and some 17-hour ones. Colleagues who had worked 20 years in Hollywood called it the worst crunch they had seen. [26]

Why it matters — Add-on content is sold as a small bonus. The schedule behind it is not small.
19
Hacker wipes a game's save data to force it off sale

Secret Neighbor, the multiplayer version of horror game Hello Neighbor, is offline. An attacker got administrator access and deleted player profiles and progress. They said they would keep going until the game was pulled from every store. [27]

Why it matters — The demand was not money. Backing up saves does not answer someone whose goal is the game's removal.
20
Meta's Pocket makes games from typed ideas

Meta's new app Pocket lets people build small games by describing them, with no coding. Its terms give Meta broad control over what comes out. [28]

Why it matters — The thing being collected is not the games. It is the store of what millions of people asked for.
21
30,000 queue a day early for a paid beta

About 30,000 people lined up 24 hours early for the last closed test of the shooter Wardogs, which needs a $40 pre-order to enter. The studio, Bulkhead, says the game has passed a million Steam wishlists and is using the test to break its own servers. [29]

Why it matters — Charging for the stress test is now a normal way to fund the servers that the launch will need.
22
Splitgate's studio quits arena shooters

1047 Games switches off dedicated servers for Empulse and Splitgate: Arena Reloaded today, saying neither makes enough money to pay for them, and says it is probably done with the genre. Players can still host their own matches. [30][31]

Why it matters — The studio raised $100m and its founder talked about becoming the next Riot Games. The servers going dark is where that ends.
23
Developers accused of using AI they did not use

Studios including New Blood, Failbetter and Abandoned Sheep say they are now routinely accused of generating their own artwork, including teams that publicly refuse to use the tools. [32]

Why it matters — Once nobody can tell by looking, the cost lands on the people who did the work by hand.
24
Xbox kept its 75-game subscription promise

Xbox said in October 2025, when it raised Game Pass Ultimate to $30 a month, that subscribers would get more than 75 games on their release day each year. It hit that in the year since, through the price rise, a restructure and 3,200 job cuts. [33][2]

Why it matters — The promise that survived the year was the one made to subscribers, not the one made to studios.

02 Lesson why it matters

Growth stopped meaning jobs when the money piled into twenty games

Half of what players spend now lands on twenty titles, so an industry can take more money every year and still need fewer people.

The twist

Revenue and jobs only move together while the money is spread out. Concentrate it enough and an industry can grow and lay people off in the same year, with neither number lying.

How it works

Players' spending piles into a few very large games
Twenty titles take half or more of all revenue
A game earning twenty times more does not need twenty times the staff
Every other studio splits what is left over
So the industry's revenue rises while the studios below the top shed people

Where you've seen this

Music streaming

payouts rise every year while most musicians earn less, because a few tracks take the plays

Book publishing

a handful of authors pay for the whole list, so the list gets shorter

Shopping streets

total spending keeps climbing while shops close, because it collects at a few very large sellers

The catch

Concentration is not the only cause. Studios also hired heavily during the pandemic, games take longer to build than they did, and both would have cost jobs on their own.

And the whole of it

The pile-up is made of ordinary choices: a player buying the game their friends already own, a publisher backing what worked last time, a shop stocking what sells. About 750,000 people work in games, and each one can see the part of it they are standing in.

03 Truth what's really going on

What is really going on

The games industry is not contracting so much as relocating, and the layoff count only measures the side it is leaving.

Why it works on us — A round number of lost jobs is easy to picture and a slow shift of work across the world is not, so the first one becomes the whole story.

Who gains

Game studios in China and the wider Asia-Pacific region — Openings there rose 10%, and 12% in China, while more than two thirds of the world's cuts landed in North America. [1]
Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund — Its own deputy governor now runs Savvy directly, so there is no outside chief executive between the state and the game companies it owns. [5][6][7]
Sony — It earns 59% more per active player than in 2018 and says it no longer markets the PS5 hard, because a game it did not make is filling the shops for it. [12][14][15]
Nexus Mods — It picks up SteamDB's decade of build records, which its mod tools need and which get hard to reach once a game updates. [9]
Hiring managers — The same job now draws applicants with three more years of experience than it used to, at no extra cost. [1]

Who pays

New graduates — About 400 US colleges now teach games and completions have quadrupled in 14 years, against a 4% chance of being hired within twelve months. [1]
Developers past about 50 — Their chance of being hired falls back to 4-5%, the same as someone with no experience at all. [1]
Bethesda's laid-off staff — People with two and three decades at the studio were let go in two-minute meetings, and colleagues doubt the games will hold their old quality. [2][3]
Players of Secret Neighbor — Their saved progress was deleted by an attacker who wants the game pulled from sale, and it is offline until the hole is closed. [27]
Anyone buying a PS5 Pro this week — Retailers sold out after the Grand Theft Auto 6 preview and other sellers listed it at up to $1,400 against a $899 price. [13]

What nobody knows yet

Open questions from across today’s stories — ours included.

01

Which workforce the 15% figure describes.

Satvat put North American losses at 25,000 roles and called that 15% of the workforce, without saying whether he meant the region's workforce or the world's. [1]
02

How many people actually work in games.

The 750,000 total comes from one research group, is far above the usual published figures, and rests on estimating employment in China, which he says is the part everyone undercounts. [1]
03

Why Brian Ward left Savvy Games Group.

No reason was given beyond a staff message saying it was the right time for new leadership, and Bloomberg's sources describe unease about how two Saudi-owned games giants will be run side by side. [5][6][7]
04

How many jobs Don't Nod is cutting.

The company named a job-preservation plan and a union meeting for today, and no number at all. [8]
05

Who will fix Star Wars Zero Company.

The studio furloughed most of its staff before the game shipped, and neither it nor Electronic Arts has said who is doing the patches. [24][25]
06

What Supercell is paying for Metacore.

Both companies say the terms will not be disclosed, and the deal closes at the end of this month. [20]
07

Whether the Square Enix denial settles it.

A magazine reported the company was studying going private, the shares rose nearly 12%, and the company says no consideration is being given. Only one of those can be checked. [16]

04 Hope carry this

Amir Satvat founded a free service that helps people find work in games, and he tracks the job cuts himself. The hall was full when he presented the numbers last week.