Crunch Deaths, Mass Layoffs, Political Firings, and Global Shifts | Games ReCap | 367

What's up everybody? Welcome to another episode of GameDev Unchained, the number one game development podcast about game development and the lifestyle thereof. I am your host Brandon Fam, and this is a solar episode. So, this is actually a re-recording of a previous episode that was just released a day ago, but based on feedback, and yes, I do read your feedback. I am re-recording it about the same topics. However, the spin by giving my take. I tried a new format where I was trying to stick to factual stuff about recent events, giving unbiased opinion, but that didn't work out, right? You guys were very direct and I appreciate it. And I guess the main thing that you guys like about this podcast is about me ranting. So, let me

add that element to it. But the majority of this is to give you guys the rundown of very big topics that happened in the past month. All right, this is Games Recap is a little different from Roundt News. it being a solar episode that and I do want to run down talking about actual facts about these topics without spending too much time discussing about it. I'll rant a little. It's a format that I'm playing with and I appreciate your guys's patience with it. Without further ado, this is Games Recap. First up, the assassination of Charlie Kirk is at the top of everyone's news feed in the past couple weeks. This happened on September 12th, 2025 during

a Q&A session at Utah. There's a lot of media outlet reporting devs from Bethesda, Epic Games, and Sucker Punch facing firing for celebrating the violence with over 200 listed by Charlie tweets detected across 20 plus studios. The most notable one is Sucker Punch's Drew Harrison, who is a 10-year veteran character artist who was firing for posting, "I'll do it again 100 times stronger after posting how violence against fascism is justified." Sonia's employer stated comments celebrating violence are unacceptable. Duh. Also letting go of many other artists for a similar issue. All right, first off, guys, no matter where you stand on the political spectrum, no judgment, let the guy get into the ground a bit before expressing these opinions about how violence is okay. So it is bizarre

in a time where every studio in the game industry is looking for excuse any excuse to like even looking at them wrong or using too much toilet paper in the bathroom. This is a very volatile time in an industry and they're firing and letting go and laying off people because they need to. This is the year where they're still cutting down and still figuring things out. And you guys are kind of Oh, not you guys, right? But like people in industry are volunteering as tribute, giving another easy layup for people to fire you over. And of course, inciting violence or okaying violence or affirming assassinations is probably not the best way to spend your time right now. How about just

let it simmer a bit before talking about this stuff? Now, it is ironic that we're still in cancel culture like that. I do not like because we went through a similar problem a few years where speaking your mind did have a lot of consequences and I personally have been in workplace where it was getting very difficult talking about anything political or expressing an opinion and it was just let's put your heads down and work and the maybe at a workplace it's not time for those type of things. Maybe that should be a general rule. I don't know. But now we're just seeing the other side of it and it's still the same thing. It's cancel culture. So, I don't know how I feel that this is still happening. However, I do

think it is pretty insensitive to the family of Charlie Kirk or his friends, to anyone that the guy just got killed on pretty much live stream that is available forever on the internet and freshly days after having to view people celebrating your dad's death or your husband's death. I just feel like that's a line you should not step over. And it is pretty insane that people are doubling down, right? So, here's a clip from Bethesda, which is bizarre. Why don't you watch it for yourself?
Nice place. You don't care much about these fascists, do you? So, this is the Bethesda's official ex account using Indiana Jones that was recently released and posting about Good Kitty. This happened like a day or two

right after the event which was deleted quickly with no specific comment. However, the internet never forgets, right? People saved that clip and is being replayed. And this is just a bizarre. First of all, who are these social media marketers who is in charge of the branding of the company and is allowed to have this much access to post these ridiculous things that have nothing to do with the game that they're working on or future announcement or the culture. And it's literally a personal expression on a company account, which is not okay. And it's just not a regular employee. It's you're the marketing manager. So, someone who was in control of this was posting this willy-nilly, making a statement, which I think at a workplace, it's pretty unprofessional.

First of all, you're representing a group of people and obviously that post was not a collection. They didn't have meetings over it. The CEO didn't give the thumbs up and there wasn't a plan of action that led to that event. So, someone just saw the event, used the company account to post something that they thought was funny, an assassination on live TV basically, and thought it was basically okay. Like, how much of a in a bubble do you have to be to go through this line of thinking, right? Forget the fact that wherever you stand on the political spectrum, just the fact that someone died, right? Just stand by that and posting something like

this and thinking that it'll be okay and that you're going to get high fives and thumbs up, right? Maybe you will in in some pockets of it, but not the majority or overall the whole company. Obviously, the whole company didn't agree. They immediately deleted it. Pretty sure that person's fired or at least reprimanded. And Microsoft had all types of problems across the board. Like this was happening over and over. Microsoft again as a reminder is the leader of laying off people for the last two years. So this is just like whack-a-ole for them where they're like, "Oh great, another excuse to fire someone else." So I don't understand how when the industry is so fragile right now and the people who are lucky enough to hold on to their jobs are spending their time disrespecting the people who don't have jobs

spending this time on the job to do these type of things and basically doubling down and proud about this. Right? It is it's not the time man. We're here to ship games. We're in a place where I'm not saying to shut up, but in a way I am. You're working at a place to make games. So make the games, right? Inciting violence is crazy. Am I the only one on this? Inciting violence on either side is crazy. And as the company, you're really not leaving the company to say anything else really. They have to at least review the case. There needs to be some kind of consequence. The only thing the silver lining I see is that there is a consistency right where about cancel culture right now where a few years it was really one-sided and now we're seeing the other side of it. At the same time though I do hate the

fact that people in their own personal time expressing opinions are being reprimanded. But I think in this case is a little different because it's literally they're celebrating violence which is I don't think it's the road that anybody wants to go down for the sake of what we're trying to do here. Even Epic Games saw some of this action. Tim Sweeney, some of his staff did that same thing and he had to defend them by clarifying against incitement. He posted a couple tweets and basically highlighting how the first amendment and he wasn't sure exactly how did they go against it, right? His employees and then had to double down. He had to correct it for damage control most likely to clarify that he's not for violence, but he is about defending

staff, freedom of speech, right? Which again, it's like not the time, guys. It's not the time. Tim Sweeney, he's protected. He's a made man. He runs the whole damn company, so he's fine. But setting an example is important. And when the whole industry is reacting pretty clearly about people expressing their opinions about this in a negative way that maybe you want to step back and see the bigger picture here, right? So there's a lot of backlash to this and the Drew Harrison is definitely his name his ex handle is Drew punching Nazi till I die which is pretty consistent and I guess that's his stance stuck by it even when there was a lot of backlash to him

saying those things he doubled down so there is a respect right he didn't back down eventually after he got fired. He still gave Sucker Punch no ill will. Still saying that it's one of the last shining light of the industry, but still unapologetically stand by what he says, which is admirable in a way, but without a job. And he has that stigma and he becomes a liability anytime he applies. No matter how good you are at character art, right? There's a lot of character artists around right now. So, it's just a bizarre way to set yourself on fire and smile about it. I was looking at the facts here. There's 15,000 jobs in 2025 alone that were cut, right? So, a lot of these companies are using these type of

firings, controversy that's brewing up to downsize, right? And it is interesting to see how a person like Harrison or these devs are proudly standing by their views. These events lead to immediate job losses for these individuals involved. Damage to the reputation and to the careers. There is a chilling effect whether you stand on the left or right side of the issue on free speech within studios. It's always been an issue on the podcast. It's one of the main reasons I've started the podcast at the very beginning. It's called GameDev Unchained, right? Because the job really was restricting in your personal time. Hobbies or passion projects outside of work was really restrictive even to a lot of degree. Now it's become a bigger problem. It hasn't really disappeared. But added on to that issue, people's

social media is really monitored nowadays, it's become a real thing that outside of the office hours that your actions and how you behave outside of work hours and office premises, you're handcuffed to the job, right? And there real consequences to it. So it is a pretty controversial issue that I got to talk to Ray about on our round table. Is that supposed to bounce ideas off and what does that mean? With team experience heightened survivor guilt. The people who still have those jobs have morality dips, right? Obviously, all your friends are getting fired and companies face potential boycots or backlash from gamers, delaying projects as talent is disrupted. Right? Overall, game projects are going to be pushed back. But in the long term, over the next 3 to 5 years, devs will be able to

start monitoring and curate their online presence more carefully. It is a slap on the wrist in some regard to hey this is becoming a real thing. You guys need to be more careful about your online presence and seeking roles and values. Align studios are shifting to indie work. So you know that opens up more choices for you guys to look at other options right if these companies don't align with your views which is restricting right now man. Everyone's out there trying to look for any job that will accept them. Now you have to limit the bubble of that to to preferences, right? In the short term, I don't see that happening. In the long term, maybe you guys will have more choices later. The industry will be able to we'll could see stricter social media policies standardized. Something that will be more clear. Got to read those new employee docs, right? I'm sure by now a lot of those contracts that you guys sign

doesn't just state your salary and how happy you are, but they're going to probably have some, if not already, measures for social media presence about what you can or cannot do. Definitely recommend you guys to look at that more carefully. But this risk talent drain to less regulated markets like eastern regions, right? The more restrictive North America is, which is what we're seeing with restriction, there are limitation, right? The eastern companies, Asia in particular, even some of Europe won't have these restrictions. So, they're going to be booming and innovating, right? We're already seeing this on that side and more on that later. Ironically, it highlights how companies already eager to downsize finding pretexts in these posts. Yet, the proud to lose its stance from some devs could foster some resilient outspoken communities outside of corporate structures. So, it'll be interesting to see what the next couple years look like as this becomes a bigger

and bigger problem. the louder employees that stand by what they say. I wonder what they're going to do if they're going to go ahead and go into the indie market or form smaller companies on their own so that they are able to advocate for their perspectives and not have direct consequences. So, it'll be interesting to see that. And on to the next. On August 28th, in this past month, 2025, a 35year-old Microsoft engineer, Petique Pandy, was found dead face down at the Mountain View campus in California after a suspected heart attack tied to chronic stress from overwork on Azir projects. His family, including his uncle, issued a public plea to Silicon Valley tech firms to halt excessive hours and monitor workload zoning. He was working late, possibly around 2:00 a.m. leading up to this event to his death. He was

complaining his family and friends how stressed he was at work, how he had to work late hours to meet aggressive deadlines. And this has always been a issue, right? I know this is more in Silicon Valley, their close cousin to the game industry, but we're seeing the same problems happening now. The funny thing is that the tech companies went through a similar, if not more aggressive layoff, strings of layoff before the game industry did. If you guys don't remember, Google, Apple, pretty much everybody in Seattle area, Bay Area were laying off thousands and thousands of people to cut costs, cut down people. And it wasn't until something like AI started really booming a lot of people back into the Bay Area and a lot of tech basically not regaining a lot of those people that got fired eclipsing previous numbers. All right. AI boom is the biggest thing

since the internet. Right. So, we're going to see we're seeing salaries on astronomical proportions. So, hopefully the game industry will see something like that to start to recover from this crazy layoff cycle that we're going through. I'm mentioning that the game industry is like a shadow of the tech companies. So, it's always great to monitor the tech companies and seeing what's happening there so that we can pivot and be able to react or plan right ahead of time. So, what we're seeing is that at the tent companies, they're crunching. It's being super competitive. Everyone's holding on to their jobs. And unfortunately, this engineer was so worried about his job security, he felt like he had to push, right? The AI boom is happening. There's a certain level of stability in

terms of a lot of engineers. It's becoming like a huge talent surge, super competitive, right? So, a lot of people are pushing their limit right now to take advantage of this AI bubble, right? So, the game industry is going to be very similar. The game industry is going to find a lot of these people who are lucky enough especially in a time like this where jobs are limited and the people who are fortunate enough to hold on to a job are still competing with those that are looking for job because there's so much talent out there. This is a running theme with game industry is that we're replaceable. So as soon as you slack or you get too comfortable, it's easy enough to pluck you out and put another person in that would work probably at a lesser salary and harder than you. So for those thinking that crunching have subsided, right? I think it's been

actually increased because of those reasons. This can be backed by the GDC 2025 stated in industry report uh details that 60% of game developers face mandatory overtime arise from previous years with AAA studios enforcing on 70% of staff compared to just 25% in indie studio. This gap widens as investment shrinks post pandemic forcing longer hours to meet live service deadlines. There's lesser developers working at each of these companies. Everyone is clutching onto their purse, being very conservative with their money, right? But the games are getting bigger. The games haven't shrunk, right? Graphic Fidelity is at a greater value every year. And the people who are at these jobs have to make up for the loss of headcount, right? In a way that that you're forced to crunch

with lesser people. The job insecurity doubles it down and then encourage you to work harder to maintain that job because all you do is go on LinkedIn and see how your friends don't have jobs and you're just thankful that you have one. It makes a lot of sense that crunch time have actually increase and it is concerning that it's been a while. I don't know the last time I heard about someone overwork to the point that they have a heart attack, but it is crazy again that Microsoft just continues to have this ability to top it the headlines in the worst way. And the crazy thing is Microsoft haven't really publicly commented on critique and just waiting for the news cycle to disappear which I guess it's working right even though another known fact is burnout affects 45% of developers with the GDC

report and USC's ethical challenges study linking it to severe health declines right we all know this heart attacks turnover spikes by 30% due to crunch defined by Wikipedia. 65 to 80 hour work weeks over months. Anything over 40 hours is pretty insane. But 65 to 80 hours is standard in terms of overwork. A norm driven by tight schedules for titles like multiplayer updates or rushed releases. It's no secret a lot of these projects are being delayed. I talked about this many times. The dynamic of a team changes with every developer that leaves. And now you have lesser people and the milestones and deadlines are the same. The only way to make up for that is crunching. And I think because developers are forced into disadvantaged place to make good decisions, they are expected to put in the extra time to

maintain their job and hit those deadlines. Microsoft's broader policy emphasizes work life balance, but no specific response to Panty's death has been issued. Like I mentioned before, from the website people's matters in September 25 notes that his tragedy sparks a reckoning while HR grapevine reports call for better support echoing last year's GDC panels advocating predictive planning to cut overtime reliance. Predictive planning is pretty much you got to keep a team together. Even if you have the the 80 people that is required to make a game work, it really does matter who those 80 people are. Are is it the first time they're working together or is this the second project? So the disruption that we're seeing for all companies is that set of Eddie people is so different and getting someone ramped up getting used to each

other's and the remote aspect of that to begin a project all these are factors that can really disrupt mess up the flow of making a project. So with over 15,000 jobs like I mentioned before cut in this past year uh companies like Microsoft push and crunch despite layoffs risk further talent drain. So in the short term incidents like this can heighten immediate health risks for devs. Everyone's stressed out. Everyone is going to have health problems. the right not just the people who are what's insane is that I'm seeing a lot of people on LinkedIn without jobs and I'm starting to see a lot of them like losing their damn mind with understandably right a lot have not faced

this type of pressure where we're used to being laid off but there have always been some kind of hope of rebounding But when you're thrown into this crazy circus of everyone being laid off and not not enough jobs being posted and every job that is being posted, there's over a thousand applicants, right? There is like a real deep sense of questioning your self-worth and then your families looking towards you for answers and you don't have them. It can really break someone down very quickly. And I've seen that a lot. You couple that with people who are at a job facing fatigue, right, with overwork, seeing these crazy amount of work, right? But basically a no hiring policy at this point. All right. It can only

increase mental strain, reduce productivity while sparking temporary policy reviews. and will lead to rush releases with bugs which damage reputations of short-term revenue amid increased acetism and moral dips. So overall it's a bad thing. All right. People are at these jobs overworked health problems trying to ship a game can't ship it on time. Companies are losing money even with great IP, right? Gamers are losing confidence because now they're playing games that cost the same and in some cases more. A lot of these games are being increased to 70 bucks to make up for profits loss, right, because of the delay or whatever. And they're getting buggy games. And we're seeing this with a lot of AAA. So the game industry as a whole is just suffering right now. And

it the only way to reinvigorate this issue that we're having is release good games on time in budget and restore the confidence in a lot of these gamers in the long term the next 3 five years what I see is a lot of devs may seek roles with better boundaries building resilience through upskilling in the management or shifting to indie work right a lot of people are going to try to move up to be managers the industry could evolve towards regulated hours via unions which What we're seeing a lot, I know Blizzard, a lot of those the WoW team and many others have became unionized. It'll be interesting to see how that plays out and how much protection they're having, especially in times like this, which I greatly encourage for a lot of these companies to have some kind of stability or a lot of these teams that have stability right now within their companies to take advantage of the fact that these companies are willing enough to hold on to them as talent to give

themselves a chance and get unionized while they are still a hot commodity. It's very easy to deny unions when there's like this crazy shakeout that's happening within industry and it could be the one thing that save us, right? The unions could reduce attrition and setting ethical standards, right? Which is don't have these knee-jerk reactions from the major corporates who are looking at just the bottom line and firing everybody invertedly just destroying themselves, right? Because the one thing that is consistent about corporate management is that they don't understand how important for a creative agency, company, whatever group to continue to make successful games is to stick together, right? the core team needs to be the same and they are destabilizing that by getting rid of everyone and thinking that somehow hiring everyone back will get them back

on track whenever they want to which is a grave mistake that I think we're feeling right now with all these buggy games and games that are taking longer years ago. Just look at the Assassin Creeds that have been developing. Like this recent Assassin Creed is much worse than the Assassin Creed from 10 years ago. And that's the same company and it's not the same people that are making these things. If this continues to be unressed, I believe that in the long term it's going to risk further talent drain. If not already, people are looking elsewhere. if not everyone is looking to change up industries but most importantly having major health crisis right just dying the main thing that we always hear about when you talk to older people and you ask them like what do they mostly regret right living a full life

right none of them ever talk about I wish I worked harder Right. That's the common thing that everyone talks about always here, but I think not enough consideration and actually taking it seriously. So, I advise you guys put your health first and without a healthy mind and body, you're going to have a harder time navigating through this tumultuous time. Continuing on to our next topic, the key word here is shakeout. All right, talking about mostly survivor guilt and industry downturn. As mentioned before, the industry have shed over 35,000 jobs globally with layoffs. FYI and Amir Savat estimating a loss of 100,000 years of collective experience

by the end of 2025. This is freaking important, right? When I saw that number, I was alarmed how much experience is exiting the industry right now. And I think a large percentage of that is permanent loss. Right? I'm seeing this where a lot of old school game designers are just clearly exiting the industry, looking for elsewhere, or not even by their own choice, but being forced out. They're having the hardest time getting back in because right now our industry have become so concentrated on technical skills, right? like how do we make this look better? And we're pushing away from the fundamentals of game design, the ones who have a strong philosophy behind game design, the ability to have the kind of ability that I feel that that is irreplaceable that have made the game industry so

great during the PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3 era that is vastly disappearing. All right. I think there's like a lot of empty soulless games being put out right now that are a poor shadow itself. Frankenstein together. So with all this shakeout that's happening, there's a lot of structural issues that are happening. There are a lot of structural issues that is really fueling this shakeout. So AAA titles costs have soared right up to 200% in recent years. At the same time, investors have been pulling back because of the COVID hype about the metaverse, NFT, and all this crap that never panned out. Blockchain and console PC segments dipped 15% in 2024, 2025. Game industry.biz is captures the sentiment with survive until 2025 which have been

like the last hope since this layoff happened in 2022 but even 2025 like I said before with 15,000 jobs already gone haven't really hit that reset that everybody was hoping and it's still I would say in a stalement right now like things are really stalling this year we're dealing still with the after effects of letting go with a lot of people. The most interesting about this is like the survivor guilt of it all. A lot of people are talking about one aspects where a lot of jobs are being lost and those unemployed are having the toughest time. But those people who still have jobs are really going through their own struggles as well. All right, we talked about crunching earlier, but 40% of the remaining developers per GDC 2025 data,

there's 20% productivity drops, right? And pushing 10% to leave the industry. So, the people who are remaining are just holding on until they find something better. And this of course is because what loyalty is left when you see everyone in your cubicle gone for doing nothing wrong, right? Just because of budget cuts. And it just is a signal that industry is not healthy. And if you're looking at long-term, do you really want to just keep working on the project, giving it your best, or are you going to spend half that time, especially when you're working remotely to plan your future better? And the age in the industry is still pretty young, right? If we're talking about 30s to 40s as a kind of like the average age of a lot of game developers, they have to look out for the next 20,

30 years of what are they going to do. Are they going to wait around for the industry to do this again when they're at their weakest, less profitable years as a developer, as a worker? So a lot of people as the data shows are spending the time if not half the time already exiting mentally from the industry itself. So the mental health of anxiety and the loss of security. There's a lot of devs just mourning their lost teammates and and just spending the time just scared about them themselves being cut. So, how are their companies responding? Companies like EA Respond and others in Obsidian's 2025 layoff archive site market adjustments for hundreds of

layoffs with GDC urging preventive measures like contract models. Contract models as in the visual effects companies, right? A lot of visual vet companies implemented contracts on a per project basis. And in a way, it does show a little bit more stability in the sense of when you start and you know when you end. That gives you a sense of control at least of being able to plan ahead before your contract ends to look for something else. However, we all saw how that kind of played out. The visual effects industry is pretty much non-existent in North America. It's not a great solution. A lot of those visual effects guys and gals have tried to transfer to the game industry for the fact that the game industry is a lot more stable, right? They want longer term job security. They

don't want to keep jumping around from job to job, right? And always worrying about what's next and never feeling comfortable. I don't like the suggestion, especially when it already says that a lot of implementation of this have been lagging and gamedeveloper.com notes lingering morale damage despite lower cuts. So, in the short term, the shakeout leads to financial instability for laid-off devs and emotional fatigue for survivors. With productivity drops to 20% or more, slowing innovation in studios industrywide, it causes talent shortages, delaying projects, and inflating hiring costs amid mergers. The long-term effect over the next 3 to 5 years of this shakeout may build coping mechanisms like pure networks, hopefully something better than LinkedIn, but right now mostly LinkedIn for mental health and diversify skills for multis- sector roles. This I do see a lot right a lot of people are upgrading their

skills and doing much more than their kind of like focus discipline. So enhancing career mobility the industry could shift to leaner models with better forecasting reducing volatility and fostering 50,000 new jobs by 2028 as per newu forecast while standardizing support programs to improve retention. So just three more years guys, just stick around three more years and things should be better. And it does feel pretty accurate. Everyone kind of held on to 2025 as the time that we rebound. But I have been personally seeing a stalemate in progress. A lot of companies are really focusing on efficiency, which in some respect I agree, right? There have been a crazy amount of overspending, but I also see a lot of companies because of being focused on efficiency are really slow on

ramping up, right? Which means that they are really considering per roll, per discipline when looking at adding headcount to their team. Which means those 35,000 jobs lost since 2022 a large percentage of that will be permanent losses because the ramp up percentage is so slow compared the job losses that are continuing that the new talent coming in will have a better chance, better optimism for these jobs that will open up. And unfortunately, I think that is probably in the long term better. That's coming from someone who's been in industry for a long time. But you need new blood in these roles, sitting in these chairs without the fatigue or stress or

post-traumatic stress of what have happened, right? to focus on the game, make better games so that the industry as a whole can rebound. Because in the end, the gamers have to feel the worth of these games and consistency of how good these games are to buy them and drive that bar chart up for investors and to restore their confidence in the game industry to be more predictable. And once that happens with more money being pumped in then hopefully we'll see what the AI sector have done for the tech industry where a lot of money flows back in a lot more project gets financed and smaller teams become bigger teams. But if you think of that process alone, that's going to take a couple of years

from here, right? It's not going to be next year is it does feel like 2028. So for those who can hold on and stay optimistic, I do recommend upskilling and being more valuable than the one discipline that you've been focused on. The last topic, the key word here is disparities, right? So, this has more to do with the California cuts versus the Europe Asia growth. So, this is a big topic. It was pretty shocking to see this laid all out. Over 50% of the global job cuts were in California, right? Amir Savat from the game business reported 54% worldwide were global job cuts and then 71% of those North American losses were in 2024 and 2025 alone despite representing just

25% of the workforce. Big hubs like Riot Games with 530 layoffs and Cloud Chamber with 80 jobs suffer due to high operational costs. And that's aside from all the Activision, Blizzard, Microsoft layoffs that have been happening over the years and continue to happen over the years after the merger. So why did California get hit the most? California have always been the mecca for a lot of the game industry jobs. Unfortunately, we pay the highest salary because of the high cost of living. If you're looking at the bottom line and if you're looking at how most jobs are remote, California becomes a very easy target for a lot of these companies which is being repeated and echoed throughout the Bay Area and Los Angeles are epicenters of these global cuts and will continue to be. So what are the after effects of that? That means if you

live in California and you love working California, you'll have a better chance in the near future at least to get a job outside of California, which also means that California salaries are probably a thing of the past, right? So, at a certain moment, you're probably going to look at, is it worth living here anymore, being paid lower, because it's not so much about working in California. It's the salaries that we've been facing that a lot of these companies don't want to pay for anymore. It's just not worth it. Remote working opened up the global industry. A lot of people are getting cheaper talent who are able to produce the same that are putting in more hours that are more passionate not just in other states but across the ocean in Europe and Asia and

this is what we're seeing. So while California and North America have been facing the blunt of these global cuts, Europe and Asia have been contrasting sharply. Their revenue has been up every year. They're seeing a 3 to 4% growth rate and even their mobile share rising from 41% in 2023 to 44% in 2024. Europe and Asia is seeing the opposite effect of what's happening in North America right now. In Eastern Markets, we're also seeing the rise of China with their games killing it right now. Not in just AAA space, but their mobile space is just continuing rising and many examples that I've cited before in Japan. Instead of these layoffs, they are raising the average salary of every worker and they are continuously

producing amazing games that everyone's looking forward to. So the shred of hope that North America companies and what we can look forward to is looking at those models and examining why they are doing so well and we're not. So we can spend all day like looking at why these things are happening and not accepting why it's happening or we can look forward across the ocean and start fixing those things right now. And many of those that I see is that they're just making better games. At the end of the day, they're just making better games cheaper with lesser people and they are more consistent about it. So, in the short term, California developers are facing relocation pressures and are moving elsewhere, right? A lot of talent

migration. So, disrupting a lot of these hubs and while Europe and Asia see immediate investments accelerating trends like mobile. So, a lot of money is moving over there, less money in North America. Not sure if it's going to come back. It's going to be more competitive for the same amount of money is what everyone's seeing. So, in the long term, over the next 3 to 5 years, Dez will gain from global opportunities like European protections or Asian esports and industry standards adopting subsidy models to equalize growth and reduce imbalances. So that's it today's episode. Let me know in the comments what your thoughts are. Stay Unchained, folks. [Music]