“It’s felt like a deluge of redundancies in the past five or six months.”
In October 2023 specifically, the union saw membership rise by 12 percent.
This was soon afterFortnite developer Epic announced a wave of job cuts.
“It’s felt like a deluge of redundancies in the past five or six months.
It just keeps coming and coming,” said Austin Kelmore, chair of the IWGB Game Workers branch.
“And with this wave, I’ve seen people saying ‘we need to join unions’.
Our membership went through the roof.
Last week, GDC published its 2024 State of the Game Industry report.
Here, it said 35 percent of game developers had been impacted by layoffs in the last 12 months.
Additionally, half of those surveyed said they areconcerned more job cuts are on the way.
This year has already seen multiple companies announce layoffs, withLeague of Legendsdeveloper Riot Games the latest.
Others affected this year includeUnity,Behaviour InteractiveandLords of the Fallen publisher CI Games.
