Unity, Amazon and Discord have gotten off to a very bad start in 2024 by laying off thousands of people. The catastrophe continues, after a particularly painful 2023 in our industry.
2023 really hurt the industry. In addition to many departures and announcements, there were also an astronomical amount of layoffs. Nearly 9,000 jobs have been lost in and around the video game industry, and unfortunately it’s not over yet. As of early 2024, several large companies such as Unity, Amazon and Discord have cut additional jobs. It hurts very, very much.
Big layoffs at Amazon and Twitch
Twitch, the streaming giant beloved by thousands of viewers, including many gamers who follow their favorite streamers and gamers, has also reduced its workforce. 500 people were laid off, almost 35% of the total remaining workforce. Last year the company cut almost 700 jobs. The reason ? Twitch is completely unprofitable. This has been going on for years and it hurts. Remember that maintaining free services comes at a cost. A bill that the platform has difficulty covering, even if it takes part of the revenue from subscriptions (subs) and integrates advertising everywhere. Streaming exploded during the pandemic and many streamers took notice at the time.
Twitch was able to breathe a little, but now it’s over and returning to reality hurts. Here, too, the platform must quickly find a solution in order not to reach a dead end, especially since the company now has a strong competitor: Kick, a significantly laxer platform in terms of regulation, which is financed by an online colossus casino. Twitch is not the only Amazon branch affected by these layoffs, as around a hundred jobs are also being cut at Prime Video and the recently acquired MGM Studios.
The unit is in turmoil as Discord scales back everything
Unity, a development company to which we owe the eponymous graphics engine, one of the most widespread in the industry, has once again laid off thousands of employees. This is the fifth wave of layoffs, the fifth time the company has cleaned up its act “Refocus your activities”. This time, Unity is laying off 1,800 employees, a quarter of its workforce. It’s colossal. After the company tried to make developers pay to fill its coffers and finally gave in after the controversy, it began to thank its employees profusely. It’s hard to say where this will all end, but it doesn’t bode well.
Finally, Discord, another company that conducted a major cleanup earlier this year, announces that it is parting ways with nearly 17% of its workforce, or 170 employees. Discord is again a free application that is increasingly in demand and has exploded significantly during the Covid19 pandemic. In order to meet demand, the company then had to increase its workforce by five employees. The problem is that the blow is over and we now have to deal with the new reality.
From this perspective, the year 2024 is starting rather badly, as almost 2,500 jobs will be lost. I hope things improve as the year progresses. But with inflation affecting all sectors and the very tight market situation, it is difficult to imagine that this will actually be the case. Not to mention the rather unstable consumption habits and trends.
