10 Gaming Industry Issues That Must Die With This Generation
6. Mass Layoffs
When game companies experience financial stress - or at least what they perceive to be financial stress - they have a lot of options available to them in order to get them through the next quarter. Some of them good, some of them bad, some of them downright heinous. Guess which one Blizzard, Activision, and a disturbing amount of other game companies go with.
Mass layoffs are the AAA game industry's latest favorite means of hoarding their money, even when they're actually doing pretty okay financially. Blizzard in particular reported that they were doing wonderfully in terms of revenue. And then immediately after making this statement, laid off over 200 employees.
And lest we forget our dear friends at Telltale games, who - before shutting down - laid off pretty much everyone working for them without any form of severance or insurance (despite doing so being required by Californian law), because the ones in charge wanted to hold onto as much of their money as they could keep their hands on.
Simply put, this needs to stop immediately, if the AAA game industry wishes to survive much longer.
After all, why should any game dev work for them if they know that they have so little job security?