A live monitor of layoffs in the video game industry: a DEVCON-style threat level based on the last 30 days of confirmed cuts, a breaking news wire curated daily from the top industry sources, and charts of the layoff wave since 2022. The name comes from the gamer ritual: press F to pay respects.
Public trackers (videogamelayoffs.com, gaminglayoffs.com, Amir Satvat's reports, the Wikipedia synthesis) for numbers, and the industry press (GamesIndustry.biz, Game Developer, Kotaku, PC Gamer, Eurogamer, VGC, Aftermath) for the wire. Every number and headline links to its source. Details in the methodology below.
Because a large share of events are reported without exact numbers, and many never reach the news at all. Crowd-sourced trackers log conservative verified floors; analysts estimate the true totals higher. We show floors and mark estimates with "~".
LAYOFFS a round of job cuts · CLOSURE a studio shut down or ending development · DIVESTITURE a studio sold or spun off with jobs affected · RESTRUCTURE an org-wide reorganization · CANCELLATION a project cancelled with confirmed staff impact · FALLOUT follow-up and aftermath reporting · LABOR worker response: protests, unions, lawsuits.
The short version, per the sourced reporting: studios over-hired during the pandemic boom and demand normalized; AAA budgets crossed $200M; the 2020–2024 acquisition spree left publishers with debt to service; and live-service bets saturated their market. The result is 50,000+ jobs lost since 2022.
The wire refreshes automatically once a day (06:00 UTC). Chart and DEVCON data update as tracked events are confirmed. The "last verified" date in the methodology tells you when the numbers were last checked by a human.
The event data mirrors the public trackers, so the fastest route is to submit there: videogamelayoffs.com takes community submissions. Our data syncs from the trackers and the press coverage.
Counts are verified floors, not estimates. Roughly a third of layoff events are reported with ranges, question marks, or no numbers at all, and many cuts never reach the news. Where trackers disagree we show the conservative confirmed number and mark estimates with "~". That is why our totals can sit below analyst estimates: for 2025, crowd-sourced tracking confirms ~5,300 while industry analysis puts the true figure near 9,200.
Event and yearly data is aggregated from Farhan Noor's videogamelayoffs.com, gaminglayoffs.com, Amir Satvat's industry reports, and the Wikipedia synthesis. Every tracked event links to a source. Raw data: layoffs.json and news.json.
The wire is refreshed daily (06:00 UTC) by an automated pipeline reading GamesIndustry.biz, Game Developer, Kotaku, PC Gamer, Eurogamer, VGC, and Aftermath. An AI curation step keeps only genuine layoff, studio-closure, and restructuring news about the game industry — opinion pieces, deals, and general game news don't make the cut — and assigns each item its tags. Every headline links to the original article.
DEVCON is computed from confirmed layoffs across tracked events in the trailing 30 days:
| Level | Trailing 30d | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| DEVCON 5 | < 100 | All quiet |
| DEVCON 4 | 100 – 499 | Background attrition |
| DEVCON 3 | 500 – 1,499 | Elevated |
| DEVCON 2 | 1,500 – 2,999 | Severe |
| DEVCON 1 | ≥ 3,000 | Industry catastrophe |
Last data verification: July 14, 2026.