59% of developers say games industry is in ‘bad’ spot because of investors and bad management-Adam Starkey-Entertainment – Metro

Not even Ichiban can please these shareholders (Sega)

Almost 60% of developers believe the games industry is going through a rough patch in a new survey, citing investors and mismanagement as the root of the problem.

If the widespread layoffs, studio closures, and spiralling development costs haven’t already made it clear, the games industry isn’t exactly in the best shape at the moment.

A key reason for this turbulence is the financial boost during the pandemic, with many companies making significant cutbacks now that the boom created by lockdown is over. Coupled with the unsustainable costs of developing big-budget current-gen games, the industry has become increasingly unstable across the board – or at least in the West, given Japan has been largely unaffected.

A new survey has asked over 600 game developers whether they believe the industry is in a bad spot, and the result probably won’t surprise you.

According to the results of the Game Developer Collective survey, 59% of developers said the industry was in a ‘bad’ spot when asked about the present market conditions. Of this amount, 38% said it was ‘bad’ and 21% said it was ‘very bad’. 26% stayed neutral on the subject, while 13% found it ‘good’.

As for the cause of these difficulties, 61% of those who picked ‘bad’ or ‘very bad’ blamed unreasonable investor expectations as the main problem. In second place was mismanagement at 58%, while others cited high development costs (41%) and too much competition from other games (22%) as the main issue.

Other reasons highlighted include marketing/user acquisition costs being too high (21%), lack of innovation (13%), too much competition from other forms of entertainment (10%), and lack of consumer demand (2%).

Many developers aren’t exactly optimistic about the future either, with 49% of those asked believing the current market conditions will stay the same over the next six months, while 19% reckon things will get worse. 25%, meanwhile, believe things will improve.

It certainly doesn’t feel like the current climate will improve anytime soon. Over the past month alone, we’ve seen the closure of Alone In The Dark studio Pieces Interactive, Wizard With A Gun’s Galvanic Games, and layoffs at Just Cause developer Avalanche.

There’s some hope that several big-hitters in 2025 could start to turn things around though, with GTA 6 and the new Nintendo console both expected to launch next year.

Our survey says… bad (Game Developer Collective)

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