It shouldn't be legal to report high earnings and lay off a large portion of your staff, that feels like something a poorly performing company would do
this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2025
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Wow there. We can't go around regulating things. What do you think we are COMMUNISTS?!?
That‘s how it is in Germany. You can only get laid off without a negotiated severance package, when the employer is in financial trouble. Even then you need start laying people off the employer needs to do it according to the social contract (e.g. single mothers last). Both is really hard to proof (in court) so usually everyone gets a severance package anyway. This means when you hear about big layoffs in Germany usually all of them get a severance package or agree to something else. These layoffs are not comparable to the USA. This is the shortened and positive descriptions of the process, but of course there are also (justifiable) downsides of doing it this way.
What would be some of the downsides? Just curious.
Some examples
- You need to pay a lot of lawyers on both sides
- You can get fired for not having kids, being young or not married
- People who are bad at their job are hard to lay off (this can include well payed managers)
- Companies find other creative ways to lay you off (if you charge your phone at work, you are stealing electricity)
Come to Germany and see for yourself :)
No!!!! Put down the beer and pretzels!!! Come to America and grab a Fresh™ slice of the Original™ FreeMarket® System©
We have all those same downsides, and many MORE!!!! Now with 80% less upside to compensate!!!
Yeah, I would get dinged for all three on that second point.
Almost none of this is unique to the gaming industry; it's all symptoms of under-regulated capitalism.
Yes, but the game industry has faced severe layoffs the last couple years while profits soar ever higher and higher and executives get bigger boats. So it's relevant.
Unionization is also super uncommon at these game development companies. Would definitely help prevent layoffs. True for every industry again, but they are underrepresented here.
It's not unique but the games industry is worse than most.
There's a natural cycle to the development of a video game that's very atypical for most software products, involving a long slow ramp up of workforce followed by (unless you've been very very careful) a total lack of anything productive for 95% of any of those people to do for the forseeable future. What to do? Toss 'em on the street, that's what to do. Then couple that with it being a glitzy career that will attract lots of replacements for any of the hapless people you fired, which also applies to any way you want to abuse your employees or underpay them, and you have a recipe for lots and lots of abuse.
followed by (unless you’ve been very very careful) a total lack of anything productive for 95% of any of those people to do for the forseeable future
It amazes me these game companies putting out game after game don't simply reassign these people to a future game. These are your seasoned veterans, they know how to do their job. Laying them off and picking up newbies just sets you up for a rocky future.
The problem is that there isn't that much to do for these armies of people during the early stages, when it's mostly a handful of programmers and designers fleshing out the core concept. Then, during the late stages, you need tons of QA people, grunt workers to create tons of art and fiddly little bits of implementation, localization and bug fixing, and whatever else. But, if you haven't planned ahead so that there is another game perfectly in the pipeline to transition all the grunt-workers over to when the first one ships, they'll all literally just be standing around doing nothing until the next game gets in shape that it's ready for them, and usually the solution is to fire all the people who just made millions of dollars for you pouring their heart into something. It's upsetting.
There are many things that game companies do consistently very very wrong, but this is one thing that isn't completely "their fault." It is possible to moderate the impacts but it's very hard and it doesn't really completely go away even if you work hard at it (which most of them don't care enough to even try to.)
I feel that perhaps "jab" is understating it!
More like a haymaker.
I have a dream of making a game of my own one day, and I have already decided to self-publish it. It's the safest move.
It's pretty easy on PC, with Steam itself and itch.io being pretty good for indies. Earning enough money from your game is a different story...
Worked on a personal game for 7 years nearly every day. Signed with a publisher and gave up on the project the following year.
Yeah, I just knew Blizzard had to be on the list