Over the past few years, the games industry has struggled with generative AI, the collapse of a pandemic-fueled surge in investment, game cancellations, studio closures used as tax write-offs, consolidation, and a market saturated with more games being released than ever before, causing developers to face layoff after layoff after layoff. To put it mildly, late-stage capitalism has not been kind.
These layoffs have primarily impacted developers in California, Texas, and Washington, the three biggest states for game development. In California alone, there were over 44,000 game developers employed in 2024, according to the Entertainment Software Association. But in a state like Wisconsin, where the industry is just barely burgeoning, losses are seemingly magnified. According to the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, in 2022, there were roughly just 1,700 employed developers in Wisconsin, so just a handful of employees can make up an entire percentage point of the Wisconsin industry. Yet a lot more than a percentage point of the state’s employees have been laid off in the past year or so.
Apex Legends developer Respawn, which opened a branch in Madison just two years ago, laid off roughly 100 employees company-wide and canceled two projects in April. Raven, the Middleton-based studio known for its work on the Call Of Duty franchise, let go of “less than 20” employees in July. Last fall, Wisconsin-based studio Lost Boys Interactive laid off 139 employees across 28 states. And smaller, more localized companies have faced extreme difficulty as well: the Madison-based developer Flippfly parted with all its employees except its lead after the release of its latest game.
After a devastating few years, most of Wisconsin’s remaining studios now face heavily reduced workforces, leaving remaining employees overworked and often underpaid and leaving those who were laid off to struggle with health hardships and difficulty staying in an industry that continues to grow less accessible…