The number of workers in the video game industry laid off so far this year is on the brink of surpassing the more than 10,000 job losses suffered across the industry in 2023. As companies shed their workforces, union organizers and game workers are turning toward union organizing as a way to protect themselves from some of the devastating consequences of layoffs.

The more than 8,000 job cuts worldwide this year have affected companies of all sizes, from giant developers like Electronic Arts, makers of the Madden NFL franchise and some of the recent Star Wars titles, to smaller independent outfits like Little Red Dog Games, a New York City-based studio that shuttered in late January under the weight of layoffs.

For a majority of workers, there is no end in sight to the waves of layoffs already experienced this year. A 2024 survey compiled by the Games Developers Conference (GDC) that polled more than 3,000 workers in the game industry found more than half of respondents, or 56%, are concerned their company could see layoffs in the next 12 months.

Union organizers in the video game industry and game developers say these layoffs are the direct results of a mix of broader economic trends that have made game development harder to sustain since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

Emma Kinema, a longtime labor organizer and games industry veteran who leads the Campaign to Organize Digital Employees (CODE) at the Communications Workers of America (CWA), said the high number of layoffs seen this year is partially a continuation of cost-cutting strategies that ushered in downsizing at studios last year.

“It feels very much like one company does it, all the other companies feel like they are under some pressure to do it too,” Kinema said. “It becomes a bit of a fad until at some point that slows down and stops, and then everyone hires all over again.”

Kinema said this phenomenon is similar to the vast number of job cuts in the tech industry, a sector where she also helps workers unionize at companies like Alphabet, Google’s parent company. The tech industry cut about 260,000 jobs in 2023, according to an NPR report. 

Jeff Shulman, a business professor at the University of Washington, told NPR tech companies act like a herd and that since the layoffs seem to be spiking stock prices, companies are choosing to continue slashing their workforce.

Rising interest rates are also to blame for the job losses, Kinema said. The current rates sit at about 5.5%, which is a far cry from the near-zero rates seen pre-2022. Rising rates are damaging to tech companies, typically valued on the basis that their profits will come in the future, as they make future cash flow less valuable.

Overestimating and overhiring during the pandemic is also a factor behind the layoffs. Workers in the industry said in interviews published anonymously in the GDC survey that studios have grown too quickly, going on hiring sprees during the pandemic all while consumers experienced a hike in cost-of-living expenses that has left them with a smaller budget for leisure activities and hobbies.

“It is a particularly bad period,” Kinema said. “It is a huge impact and blow to workers … Unfortunately, it seems typical of how companies make financial decisions based on quarter-by-quarter reasonings and not actual long-term sustainability.”

Beyond the material losses workers experience when they are laid off, job cuts are also a particular pain point for worker morale across the industry.

“These companies can rake in billions of dollars off of the labor of us, the workers,” Kinema said. “All they care about is whether the stock prices are going up or whether the next quarterly report looks good … I think a lot of people see that, and a lot of people feel that right now.”

A slight silver lining in the midst of layoffs is that the games industry’s current state is galvanizing workers to come together and collectively bargain for better working conditions and to have a say in how their workplace operates, union organizers and workers say. 

Currently, 5% of developers polled in the GDC survey said they’re unionized, and 57% of workers in the industry think workers in the industry should be unionized. 

“For most people, [seeing the layoffs] is actually quite catalyzing,” Kinema said. “[It leads to the] understanding that you are just an expendable worker, you really are just one cog in a larger machine, and the bosses really will cut you if they don’t think it’s worth it.”

Jessica Gonzalez, a longtime quality assurance (QA) worker in the games industry and a labor organizer with CODE-CWA, said unionizing can also help workers negotiate more “ethical layoffs” if their roles are being cut from the company. This entails negotiating protections such as extended health care coverage and severance pay, benefits she noted are not always honored by companies dealing with non-union employees.

“If we fight for ethical layoffs … in a way that is human and not automated will make, people will feel better, and they’ll do better work that way. We’ll get better games, frankly,” Gonzalez said.

Having a union representative who can undergo the layoff process with workers would also be hugely beneficial, Gonzalez said. 

“We don’t know a lot of employment rights out the gate, especially if you’re just joining the job market. Learning your rights is huge,” Gonzalez said. “That is just a strong tool to have in a meeting … Having that representative with you to make sure that you’re asking the right questions, make sure you’re securing severance, and you’re securing health care is just more graceful than being locked out of Slack and deactivated and not being able to talk to your peers.”

Collective bargaining as a union also gives workers and employers a mutually agreed-upon roadmap to follow during layoffs. 

Autumn Mitchell, a QA worker at ZeniMax Studios in Maryland and a member of the ZeniMax Workers United union, said the bargaining committee for her union has already held conversations with the studio’s parent company Microsoft regarding potential layoffs in the future during negotiations over the studio’s first union contract. The group of about 300 QA workers at ZeniMax, who typically test a game to iron out glitches and other mistakes prior to the game’s launch, voted to unionize in 2022.  

Discussing layoffs at the bargaining table with Microsoft is particularly timely for Mitchell, given that the company has announced it would lay off 1,900 workers from its gaming division in January. 

Many of the laid-off workers, who make up about 8.6% of the workforce at Microsoft’s gaming division, had just been onboarded at the end of last year after being assimilated as part of Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision/Blizzard/King (ABK), the company behind Call of Duty and World of Warcraft, for $69 billion.

“For it to be at our own company, there is that sort of initial sinking feeling of like, ‘Oh my god, who is it going to be?’” Mitchell said. “We have had conversations with Microsoft, saying, ‘Hey, before you start doing something like this, you gotta give us notice. We have to bargain over it’ … It is empowering to know [layoffs] are not just going to blindside us.”

Improving working conditions in the industry

QA work typically entails long hours, particularly as a game’s release date nears. At this point, some studios may push their testing teams to put in extra shifts, resulting in some of the most prominent cases of abuse in the industry. Periods of such overexertion are commonly known in the industry as “crunch,” and at least 40% of game developers have reported experiencing crunch at least once, according to a 2019 survey from the International Game Developers Association.

Beyond seeking protections from layoffs or securing benefits extensions after layoffs occur, unions in the industry like ZeniMax Workers United are fighting to secure better working conditions. Currently, the company is in negotiations with Microsoft to strike a deal on the union’s first collective bargaining agreement.

Raises and the ability to decide their work setting are particularly important to the testers at ZeniMax, Mitchell said.

“QA is very much set up to be culturally and systemically kind of at the bottom of the ladder,” she said. “It is the last rung of the ladder in the way that we’re regarded and treated.”

Part of that translates into low wages. For workers at ZeniMax, base pay for QA testers hovers around $20 an hour. That hourly rate is insufficient to cover basic living expenses like rent in the city of Rockville, Maryland, where ZeniMax is located. As of November 2023, the average rent in the city is about $2,213.

“When you’re doing things like making $15 or $20 an hour … you are not just living paycheck to paycheck,” Mitchell said. “You’re working a second job, or you’re selling your art. You are living with multiple roommates. We got lots of people here who are in their late 20s, 30s, and 40s with roommates … because they love their job. It is just not sustainable.”

Workers also want to be able to have a voice at the table regarding the way they work.

“We want to make sure that when it comes to things like layoffs or return-to-office mandates that we are in a position where we can say, ‘I actually want to be a part of that conversation,’” Mitchell said.