Europe and Asia Game Industry is Booming! | Games ReCAP

[Music] 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 the 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] [Music]

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