LogInNorth America has been hit by job cuts the hardest, accounting for 70-75% of them.
Although still happening relatively frequently, the mass layoffs that have plagued the game industry over the past few years have mostly disappeared from headlines, entering, as is the case with any economics-related issue, its inevitable second stage – a detailed analysis by industry experts. One of them is Tencent executive Amir Satvat, known for his website that helps laid-off developers find new jobs, who recently revealed which regions of the world were hit hardest by job cuts.
TGA
According to Satvat in his interview with The Game Business, North America experienced the most severe mass layoffs, accounting for 70-75% of all job cuts. The US state of California, in particular, was described as "the epicenter of the difficulty," representing over half of global layoffs. "North America used to have 30%, 35%, 40% of the open roles, and that number is now down to 25%," the expert notes.
At the same time, he pointed out that overall industry employment has actually grown since the pre-pandemic period, with Asian developers seeing a rise in jobs that has seemingly offset the thousands of layoffs in North America. With this in mind, he recommends that Western studios remain open to the idea of opening chapters in Asian countries, at least temporarily.
"There is opportunity, but it may be that if you want to stay in the industry, being open to going to some of these places like China, like Japan, not forever, but for some amount of time, that's going to become a larger part of the equation," commented Satvat.
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