Survey Results Show Nearly Half of Developers Have Considered Leaving the Gaming Industry
Between 2022 and 2026, the gaming industry has already laid off nearly 45,000 people. This continuous wave of layoffs has significantly decreased developers’ job security, which is understandable. The industry's accelerated adoption of AI tools, coupled with the ongoing shortage of memory chips affecting next-generation consoles, further exacerbates the situation for those working in the field.
John Romero, co-creator of *Doom*, put it most accurately in his summary last month: “We lived through the industry crash of the 80s, and this upheaval is definitely worse than that one.”
According to games industry media outlet GamesIndustry.biz, recruitment agency Skillsearch surveyed over 1,000 gaming industry professionals from the UK, Europe, North America, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and North Africa. The results showed that 44% of respondents had considered leaving the industry due to the wave of layoffs; and 76% of respondents in the UK said they planned to look for work outside the industry by 2026.
Among respondents who had experienced layoffs, 45% said they had found new jobs within the gaming industry, but only 27% of those felt secure in their new positions. Job security and compensation are the two biggest concerns for professionals heading into 2026, and the increasing use of AI in the development process further exacerbates this anxiety – over half of respondents revealed that their company is already using generative AI tools.
Developers also acknowledge that AI offers certain benefits, such as improving work efficiency and assisting small teams, but at the same time, 64% of respondents believe that AI has a negative impact on the industry’s creativity, and only 29% believe their company has developed ethical usage policies for this technology. Regrettably, art positions have been identified as “one of the areas most affected by layoffs.” This signal is worrying as more and more studios are starting to use AI technology in concept design, placeholder asset creation, and even voice acting.
In addition to job security, respondents’ core concerns about AI also include the loss of creative authenticity and the ethical issues of technology use. AI tools not only scrape artists’ work for training without their consent or compensation, but the data centers required for their operation also consume enormous amounts of electricity and water: not only consuming large amounts of fossil fuels and emitting greenhouse gases that cause global warming, but also further exacerbating water shortages in areas already at risk. In fact, estimated data shows that the water consumption of AI-related infrastructure will soon reach six times the national water consumption of Denmark.
Despite the fact that Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Take-Two Interactive, has repeatedly emphasized that AI must never be used to replace human creativity, and is one of many voices publicly opposing the misuse of this technology, companies such as Nexon, Nvidia, Capcom, and Epic Games are actively embracing AI. At the Game Developers Conference (GDC), investors expressed disbelief at many developers’ opposition to generative AI tools.
As early as 2024, when this technology was still in its early stages of development, there were already cases of developers being replaced by AI – developers at King spent months building tools to accelerate the development of *Candy Crush*, only to be replaced by the AI they trained. Given this, the current state of the industry is not surprising.