It’s been a tough year for the gaming industry. Even though we’ve been playing quality games almost constantly throughout 2023, the people who made them have been fired, mistreated, or had their studios shut down entirely. Developers are constantly in fear of losing their livelihoods, as even a successful game like Baldur’s Gate 3 hasn’t stopped Hasbro from laying off 900 people.
The situation has gotten so bad over the past few years that even the people behind the most successful games of 2023 no longer work for the companies that profit from their work. Baldur’s Gate 3 can be used as an example here, as Larian CEO Sven Vincke recently revealed that the Dungeons & Dragon team at Wizards of the Coast that helped launch the game is “almost gone.”
Vincke used his personal Twitter account to thank a number of people who helped make Baldur’s Gate 3 a reality, something he wanted to do during his speech at The Game Awards had he not been quickly removed from the stage. It is in this Twitter thread that Vincke reports that almost everyone involved in the original Baldur’s Gate 3 meeting has since been fired.
While layoffs are nothing new in the gaming industry, this year saw an almost unprecedented number of them, with BioWare, CD Projekt Red and Bungie laying off hundreds of employees. We’ve also seen some incredibly well-known studios close, most notably Embracer shutting down Saints Row developer Volition and Timesplitters developer Free Radical Design.
Some of the companies laying off people are huge: Fortnite developer Epic Games laid off nearly 900 employees back in September. Microsoft also laid off 10,000 employees earlier this year, which reportedly affected developers such as Bethesda, The Coalition and Halo developer 343 Industries. There is hope that next year will be better, but there are also fears that things could get much worse from there.
2023-12-14 06:03:55
#Baldurs #Gate #original #meeting #team #fired #Hasbro
