Gaming · Sunday, 20 September 2026

01 Briefing what happened

Nintendo, Konami and Capcom kept 97 in 100 staff. In 2026, 96 of every 100 games jobs lost went in North America and Europe.

A tracker kept since 2022 counts 57,628 games jobs gone. An interview published this week says 96 of every 100 of this year's losses were in North America and Europe.

97 in 100

staff kept at Nintendo, Konami and Capcom

Satvat says Japan has had mass layoffs too, at nothing like the Western scale [1]

96 of 100

of this year's games job losses, in North America and Europe

his tracker counts 57,628 jobs gone since 2022 [2]

$38.6m

paid to EA's chief executive Andrew Wilson last year

Satvat puts a Japanese games boss at two or three million dollars [1][2]

$37,000

average pay for a Japanese game developer in 2019

PC Gamer notes the gap is not only at the top; American developers averaged $142,000 in a 2025 study [1]

The lead story — what happened

Amir Satvat, a former Tencent games executive who has counted games job losses since 2022, says Nintendo, Konami and Capcom each keep more than 97 in every 100 of their staff. [1][3]
His tracker counts 57,628 games jobs lost across the world between 2022 and 2026. [2]
In 2026 alone, 96 of every 100 games jobs lost went in North America and Europe. [2]
Satvat says Japanese teams are smaller, and did not chase live-service games, which keep selling things to the same players for years and need big crews to feed them. [1][3]
He says Japanese games bosses are paid two or three million dollars a year, not thirty million. [1][2]
Electronic Arts paid its chief executive Andrew Wilson $38.6m last year and cut staff this year. [2]
Take-Two paid Strauss Zelnick $42.1m in 2022 and also cut staff this year. [2]
When a Japanese studio has to shrink, Satvat says it first cuts work it buys from contractors outside Japan, to protect core staff at home. [2]
Japanese developers are paid far less: a 2019 industry survey put the average at about $37,000, against $142,000 in a 2025 American survey of 500 people. [1]
Satvat says that for a big-budget developer in North America or Western Europe this is as bad as the games crash of 1983. [1][2]
He also estimates that 18,000 to 25,000 people still start new games jobs every year, which Kotaku said is hard to square with his own count of the losses. [3]

96 of 100

of 2026's games job losses were in North America and Europe

Amir Satvat's tracker counts 57,628 games jobs lost worldwide since 2022. Almost all of this year's share went in two places.

Who is involved

Amir Satvat

a former Tencent games executive who runs a free jobs-help service and a games layoffs tracker; he gave the interview
Nintendo, Konami and Capcom

three of Japan's biggest game makers; Satvat says each keeps more than 97 in 100 of its staff
Electronic Arts

one of the world's biggest game publishers, behind Battlefield and EA Sports FC; it paid its chief executive $38.6m last year and cut staff this year
Edge

a British games magazine; it ran the interview in issue 428 and put it online through its Knowledge newsletter

How it unfolded

1983 the games crash Satvat says this now matches for big-budget Western developers [1]
2022 Satvat starts counting games job losses [3]
2022-26 57,628 games jobs go worldwide [2]
2026 96 of every 100 of the year's losses fall in North America and Europe [2]
This week Edge's interview goes online and three games sites pick it up [1][2][3]

Where this points

The thing that would test Satvat's reading is a big Japanese publisher cutting staff at home on the scale seen in North America and Western Europe, which he says has not happened. [1][2]

What is pushing on the whole day

The bar and the word are our reading of how hard each one is pushing today. The arrow is where it is heading. The evidence is in the stories below.

Jobs going in the West High→

Amir Satvat's tracker counts 57,628 games jobs lost since 2022. [2] Harvey Smith told Edge magazine that the team shut at Arkane Austin, the studio behind Dishonored, might have made another hit had it been kept. [4]

AI moving into the work Building↑

A 2026 survey of Japan's games business puts developers using generative AI at 85.8%, up from 51% a year earlier. [5] Level-5's president apologised after players spotted AI footage in his own studio's showcase. [8]

Too many games, too little attention High↑

SteamDB counts 18,933 games released on Steam this year. [9] One More Level priced Valor Mortis at $40 because October is crowded. [13] Forty indie games share one 45-minute show next month after more than 300 studios applied. [15]

Crowds at the Tokyo Game Show Building↑

Organisers cancelled the show's fifth day as Typhoon Dujuan came in. [6] Free Grand Theft Auto 6 T-shirts were being resold for about $76 within hours. [7]

The rest of the day

15 more stories on this beat.

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

02
Typhoon cuts the Tokyo Game Show short

Tokyo Game Show, the biggest games fair in Japan, cancelled its final day on 21 September as Typhoon Dujuan came in. [6] Organisers said on 19 September that strong winds and rain would make travel unsafe, and that everyone holding a ticket for that day would be refunded. [6] This is the show's 30th year and the first time it had run to five days, using a Japanese public holiday on 21 September to add one. [6] The floor stayed open on 20 September. [6]

Why it matters — Ticket holders get their money back. The studios that paid for five days of floor space have not been told what they get. [6]
03
Japanese developers' AI use jumps to 85.8%

The 2026 CESA report, an annual survey of Japan's games business, found 85.8% of Japanese developers now use generative AI in making games, up from 51% a year earlier. [5] Sixty-three per cent said they use it every day. [5] A survey of developers at this year's Game Developers Conference put use at 36%, and 52% of the people asked said they think the technology is bad for the industry. [5] Japanese respondents named lower cost and shorter build times, and said a person checks the output. [5]

Japanese developers, 2026 CESA survey85.8%
Developers at this year's Game Developers Conference36%
Two surveys from 2026, asking different groups. The Japanese figure was 51% a year earlier.

Why it matters — PC Gamer called the Japanese industry far quicker to take up these tools than the North American one. [5] Level-5's apology the same week shows what happens when players notice it. [8]
04
Veterans say the trouble is bigger than games

Edge magazine asked a group of long-serving developers what has gone wrong with their industry. [4] Harvey Smith, a former creative director at Arkane Studios and a maker of Dishonored, said the people at Arkane Austin might have made another hit if Microsoft had not closed the studio in 2024. [4] Raph Koster, who worked on the early online worlds Ultima Online and Star Wars: Galaxies, said a market left alone concentrates into a few owners. [4] Sam Barlow, who made the detective game Her Story, said fixing games might mean fixing more than games. [4]

Why it matters — These are the people who made the games the big publishers still sell sequels to. [4] Smith said the money that might have kept a studio going is put into AI instead, because that is what lifts a company's shares. [4]
05
Level-5's boss apologises for AI in his showcase

Akihiro Hino, president of the Japanese studio Level-5, admitted on 12 September that generative AI made some of the footage in his company's LEVEL5 VISION presentation. [8] Level-5 makes the puzzle series Professor Layton and the monster series Yo-kai Watch. [8] Players had spotted the AI and complained. [8] Hino said it was used to make the show 'more spectacular', apologised, and said scenarios, character designs and settings are all made by people. [8] He said the studio's wider aim for AI is cutting a five-year build to two. [8]

Why it matters — A studio reached for a cheap tool on the one thing players watch most closely, and was saying sorry within days. [8] Krafton, Square Enix and EA have all said publicly that they are putting AI at the centre of how they work. [8]
06
Indie developers say a $2,228 promotion did almost nothing

Small developers spent the weekend on X complaining about Best Indie Games, a YouTube channel with over 190,000 subscribers run by a creator called Clemmy. [9] A developer posting as devoriahub put up what it called Clemmy's cheapest tier: $2,228 for a short video, a minute in a compilation, one post and a newsletter mention. [9] Kotaku called the breakdown unconfirmed, and said other developers replied that they recognised the figures. [9] One studio said it paid $177 last year and got 1,622 impressions, with no rise in Steam wishlists. [9]

60 of 100
of this year's Steam releases get nine user reviews or fewer
SteamDB counts 18,933 games released on Steam in 2026. Only about five in a hundred pass 500 reviews.

Why it matters — SteamDB counts 18,933 games released on Steam this year, about 72 a day, and 60 in every 100 of them get nine user reviews or fewer. [9] A developer with no marketing staff can only find out whether a promotion works by paying for it first. [9]
07
Scalpers empty the Tokyo Game Show giveaways

Free gifts handed out at Tokyo Game Show booths were being resold within hours. [7] A T-shirt given to people who watched a Grand Theft Auto 6 screening at the PlayStation booth was listed on the Japanese auction site Mercari for over 12,000 yen, about $76. [7] The queue for that booth closed within ten minutes of opening on the first public day because it was full. [7] A Red Bull stand giving away metal cups had to stop when the crowd became unsafe, and started again later the same day. [7]

Why it matters — Kotaku's reporter at the show wrote that people attending on the business days, before the public was let in, were already listing the shirts on Mercari. [7] Entry tickets for the whole of the first public day were gone in the rush. [7]
08
Nintendo puts a $49.99 electric ocarina on sale

Nintendo opened pre-orders for a real electric ocarina, the small flute at the centre of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. [14] It costs $49.99 and arrives on 5 November, a week after the Switch 2 remake of the game goes on sale. [14] Play a tune on it and the character on screen plays the same notes; it also holds 12 stored songs. [14] Nintendo had shown the accessory at its Zelda 40th anniversary broadcast without giving a price or a date. [14]

Why it matters — The same broadcast opened pre-orders for a 40th anniversary Switch 2 console and a foil cover edition of the game. [14] The ocarina is a fourth thing to buy out of one old game. [14]
09
Control Resonant lets players move the dials both ways

Remedy published an essay explaining how the assist settings work in Control Resonant, the sequel it is about to release. [11] Sergey Mohov, its lead gameplay designer, wrote that Easy, Normal and Hard are blunt tools, because lowering every enemy's health across the board makes progress feel unearned. [11] Instead the game exposes single numbers - how fast an enemy's shot travels, how long the perfect-dodge window lasts - and each can be made harder as well as easier. [11] Mohov asks players to try the game as built before changing anything. [11]

Why it matters — A player who cannot hit one timing, but has no trouble with anything else, can now change only that timing. [11] Kotaku called Ubisoft the main pioneer of this work and said Remedy has been doing good work in the same area. [11]
10
A 1999 role-playing game gets another patch

Planescape: Torment is 27 years old, and the Enhanced Edition of it got a new test patch on 15 September. [12] Beamdog, the company that maintains it, added a setting that scales the interface to a modern screen instead of locking it at 1024 by 768. [12] Saved games stored online now switch on from the Steam program itself, and saves on the GOG store now work at all. [12] The patch brings the game in line with updates Beamdog's other Enhanced Editions already have. [12]

Why it matters — Old PC games get harder to run every year, and keeping them alive usually falls to unpaid fans. [12] This one is still being patched by the company that sells it. [12]
11
Valor Mortis priced at $40 because October is crowded

One More Level, the studio behind Ghostrunner, priced its new first-person Soulslike Valor Mortis at $40, which Eurogamer noted is cheaper than other games out around the same time. [13] The studio said its game could go toe-to-toe with full-price titles on quality and its 20-hour story, but that 'this fall is stacked'. [13] It launches on 13 October, weeks after Marvel's Wolverine, Silent Hill: Townfall and Control Resonant, and in the same month as Gears of War: E-Day and Ace Combat 8. [13] A $60 version adds story content due in 2027. [13]

Why it matters — Control Resonant is the game that pushed Valor Mortis out of September in the first place. [13] One More Level could not move the date a second time, so it went out at $40 against games costing more. [13]
12
Forty indie games share one show on 8 October

Evil Empire, a studio in Bordeaux, France, will run its Triple-i Initiative showcase again on 8 October. [15] It is a not-for-profit 45-minute broadcast of independent games with no advertisements and no presenter, set up against the Game Awards. [15] Forty games will appear, including the diving game Dave the Diver, Risk of Rain 2 and the pirate survival game Windrose. [15] Benjamin Laulan, Evil Empire's head of business, said the show receives more than 300 submissions for those 40 slots. [15]

Why it matters — More than 300 studios applied for 40 free slots, which is one measure of how hard a small game finds an audience. [15] It is the same problem the developers paying a YouTuber are trying to buy their way out of. [9]
13
India sets a Mumbai final for its home-made shooter

nCore Games and Dot9 Games set the live final of FAU-G Veer Sangram, the first squad tournament for the Indian shooter FAU-G: Domination, for 17 and 18 October in Mumbai. [17] Sixteen teams qualify from an online leaderboard, each with four players and a substitute. [17] The prize pool is 1 million rupees, with 500,000 to the winners and 300,000 and 200,000 to the next two. [17] The winning squad also gets training with Orangutan Esports at an arena in Navi Mumbai. [17]

Why it matters — Deepak Ail, who co-founded Dot9 Games, said the tournament was built to find India's best team players and give them a route to professional play. [17]
14
Heroes of the Storm's team says it has dates now

Heroes of the Storm, Blizzard's team battle game, has had no new character since December 2020. [16] Blizzard had already cut its development and its tournament support in 2018, and left it running with nothing added. [16] A small team went back to it in 2022 under producer James Yen, who first joined the game in 2015. [16] At BlizzCon 2026 it opened the show with a new character, Xal'atath, and Yen told Polygon the team has plans and dates in mind for more. [16]

Why it matters — Polygon described the return as years of quiet work without overpromising. [16] A game Blizzard had stopped funding is being funded again by the same company. [16]
15
Lollipop Chainsaw is getting a live-action film

Dragami Games, the Japanese studio behind the revival of Lollipop Chainsaw, announced a live-action film at the Tokyo Game Show. [10] The original game, made by Grasshopper Manufacture, follows Juliet Starling through a zombie outbreak at her school. [10] The film is a prequel, rated R, described as an action comedy, with Juliet again as the lead. [10] Dragami named producers from five companies and called the team international; IGN said there is no word on whether Suda51, who directed the game, or James Gunn, who wrote it, is involved. [10]

Why it matters — It is the third thing announced out of that one game, alongside a sequel and an anime series. [10] Dragami did not make the original; it took on the name and is selling it in three formats at once. [10]
16
Wardogs ships with a list of servers

Bulkhead's shooter Wardogs launched with a server browser, a list of servers players pick from by hand. [18] It sorts by number of players, ping (the delay to the server), rules and map, and carries a section of community servers rented from outside firms. [18] There is no matchmaking button and no skill-based matching. [18] PC Gamer wrote that the game is drawing the biggest crowds this kind of round-based military shooter has seen, and contrasted it with Battlefield 6, which it said offers no such list. [18]

Why it matters — A rented community server keeps the same players together between matches, which automatic matchmaking breaks up after every round. [18] The servers are rented from outside firms rather than run by the publisher. [18]

02 Lesson why it matters

Why the same bad year costs jobs in one country and not another

Japan's biggest studios kept more than 97 in every 100 staff, while 96 of every 100 games jobs lost this year went in North America and Europe.

The twist

Japanese studios did not handle this year better than Western ones. They hired fewer people years ago, so when the money came up short there was less of it sitting in wages.

The picture

A Japanese games boss, Satvat's figure$3m

EA's chief executive, last year$38.60m

Take-Two's chief executive, 2022$42.10m

Pay for one year. Satvat gives the Japanese figure as a range of two to three million dollars; the other two are the reported amounts.

How it works

A game sells less than the company planned
The missing money has to come out of a cost the company already carries
The three big ones are staff wages, executive pay, and work bought from outside
Japanese firms cut the outside work first and keep their own staff
North American and European firms cut staff, and executive pay does not move

The same force, elsewhere today

Where this chain is also running, in today's other stories.

The $2,228 promotion indie developers are angry about

a one-person studio has no marketing staff at all, so the only cost it can move is cash handed to somebody who already has an audience
Valor Mortis at $40

One More Level cannot outspend October's big releases, so it went out at $40 against games costing more
Forty indie games sharing one 45-minute show

none of the 300 studios that applied can pay for a broadcast alone, so they queue for a free slot instead

Where you've seen this

Restaurants

a kitchen that owns its building can cut opening hours when trade drops; one paying rent has to keep the seats full

Football clubs

a club with long contracts on high wages cannot shrink after a bad season, so it sells players instead

Airlines

a fleet is bought years ahead, so a quiet summer shows up in the crew roster rather than in the planes

The catch

Satvat says Japan is not a utopia, and the protection has a price that is paid somewhere else. The work cut first is done by contractors outside the country, and a 2019 survey put an average Japanese developer's pay at about $37,000 against $142,000 in a 2025 American survey.

And the whole of it

The people losing their jobs did not decide how large their studio would grow. That decision was made years earlier by people who are mostly still there. A player buying the game sees the price and nothing else.

03 Truth what's really going on

What is really going on

Amir Satvat's numbers say this is not a games crash but a North American and Western European one: 96 of every 100 games jobs lost in 2026 went in those two places, while Nintendo, Konami and Capcom kept more than 97 in 100 of their staff. [1][2][3] Electronic Arts and Take-Two each cut staff this year, and each paid their chief executive more than $38m. [2]

Why it works on us — A single worldwide total, 57,628 jobs, makes the losses look evenly spread. Satvat's own split by country puts almost all of this year's in two places. [2]

Who gains

Chief executives at big Western publishers — EA and Take-Two both cut staff this year, and their last reported pay was $38.6m and $42.1m. [2]
Core staff at Japanese studios — Satvat says the work cut first is bought from contractors outside Japan, which is how staff at home are kept. [2]
The YouTube channel Best Indie Games — Its cheapest advertised package is $2,228, according to a breakdown Kotaku called unconfirmed, and two studios who paid earlier, cheaper rates reported little in return. [9]
Dragami Games — It owns a 2012 game it did not make and now has a sequel, an anime and a film out of the one name. [10]
Level-5 — AI footage made its showcase look more expensive than it was, and the cost of being caught was an apology. [8]
Bulkhead — Wardogs leans on community servers rented from outside firms rather than on the publisher's own matchmaking. [18]

Who pays

Games workers in North America and Europe — 96 of every 100 of this year's industry job losses were in those two places. [2]
Contractors outside Japan — Satvat says Japanese studios cut their outside contractors first, which is what protects core staff at home. [2]
Japanese developers — A 2019 survey put their average pay at about $37,000, against $142,000 in a 2025 American survey. [1]
First-time indie developers — One studio said it paid $177 and got 1,622 impressions with no rise in Steam wishlists; another paid about $217 and had its trailer buried in one long video. [9]
Studios exhibiting at the Tokyo Game Show — They bought floor space for five days, the fifth was cancelled, and refunds were announced only for ticket holders. [6]
People who queued for a free T-shirt — The Grand Theft Auto 6 queue filled within ten minutes and the shirts were listed for resale at about $76. [7]

What nobody knows yet

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

01

How many games jobs will actually go in 2026.

Satvat estimates about 14,500 for the year, and also says 18,000 to 25,000 people start new games jobs annually; Kotaku said the two figures are hard to square. [3]
02

Whether Japanese retention holds if Japanese sales fall.

Satvat says Japan has had mass layoffs too, at nothing like the Western scale, and gives no number for them. [1]
03

What studios that bought five days of Tokyo Game Show floor space get for the cancelled day.

Organisers announced refunds for ticket holders and said nothing about exhibitors. [6]
04

Whether the $2,228 price list for the Best Indie Games promotion is genuine.

One developer posted it, Kotaku called it unconfirmed, and several other developers replied that they recognised the figures. [9]
05

How Japanese and American developer pay really compare.

The $37,000 Japanese average comes from a 2019 survey and the $142,000 American one from a 2025 survey of 500 people, six years and two methods apart. [1]
06

How much of Level-5's showcase was made by AI.

Akihiro Hino said it was used in a wide variety of ways in the presentation and not in the released games, and gave no breakdown. [8]
07

When Beamdog's Planescape: Torment patch leaves testing.

It is a release candidate for an update with no announced date. [12]

04 Hope carry this

Planescape: Torment is 27 years old. On 15 September the company that still maintains it shipped another patch, adding a setting that lets the game fill a modern screen and fixing saved games on two stores.

Also true today

Remedy published how Control Resonant's assist settings work. A player who cannot hit a dodge timed to a fraction of a second can widen that one window, without making every enemy in the game weaker.