Things are as bad as they’ve ever been for workers in the video game industry. Layoffs, studio closures and a lack of funding are decimating headcount and opportunities. We’ve written a lot about this, and of what people have decided to do leaving the games industry, but what’s it like right now for the tens of thousands of workers looking to get in, stay or get back into video games?
For as long as we’ve been hearing about layoffs, there's been a concurrent tragedy: extremely qualified designers, artists, programmers, social media experts and other workers all across the industry have not only lost their jobs, they've quickly run into a succession of brick walls as they try to find new ones. Many are filing hundreds of applications over months and even years, all to no avail, while also having to deal with everything from hiring scams to overwhelmed recruitment teams, AI screening tools to rampant ghosting. Basically, trying to find a job in video games at the moment has become a dehumanising, demoralising grind.
Given the scale of the issue, it’s something often brought up in discussions, studies and exasperated Linkedin posts as a collection of raw numbers (we’re at an estimated 35,000 laid off games workers and counting, if you’re wondering). A single job had this many applicants, there are this many artists out of work right now, only this percentage of people are ever going to find meaningful work in video games ever again, etc.
But behind those numbers are people. Individuals with their own experiences, needs, work history and skills. Here are some of those peoples’ stories.
BRUCE
Bruce (not their real name) has been applying for jobs for months. At studios like Ghost Stories Games, who they say interviewed them, then had them complete two workplace assignments (one an “entire paper”) after which they “ghosted”, a practice where prospective employers–just like the word means elsewhere–simply never get back to you, even to tell you you’ve been unsuccessful.
Bruce then applied for a role at Misfit Games, where they say exactly the same thing happened: an interview, an assessment, then ghosted. EA Sports’ Madden team had Bruce complete an assessment then ghosted. They say applications at High Voltage Software, Double Fine, Hypixel and 1047 Games all involved either interviews, assignments or both, and they all ghosted as well.
AUDREY
“Larian are the absolute worst at this”, says Audrey (not their real name). “I've interviewed with them twice and feel like an idiot for doing so. The first time I applied, the second time they approached me.”
For the first interview, they say that after applying via a public posting the studio told them they hadn't even meant to post the job publicly; it was intended for university graduates. However, the recruiter had said he “had read over 200 applicants and portfolios and mine was so strong he'd set a writing test before he went on holiday the next week.”
“He didn't send it, and I ended up finding another Larian recruiter on Linkedin to send it.”
That test involved writing a “complex interactive dialogue sequence” in Twine, which was supposed to take only a few hours, but realistically–after revisions and polish–took much longer.
“It's stressful waiting for a reply”, Audrey says. “I kept to my side of the deadline twice. While it's being reviewed, it's not something I feel OK using for a portfolio piece elsewhere. The Twine template means it's much harder to reuse elsewhere, too. So it's not as if I get a portfolio piece out of it”. This application was unsuccessful, but in late 2024 a Larian recruiter reached out to them personally and “asked to talk”.
“So I did”, they say. “It was initially for another role related to writing, but after talking to me he said I could try out for both and warned me their replies could be slow. I said I had tried before and while he was thrown, he did say repeat applications were OK. I did ask what the response times were, he said they'd worked on it but it shouldn't be more than a month.”
“It's been a year. No response to emails, nothing on Linkedin.”
...in 2022 I applied for two jobs and received offers for both. In 2024-5 I applied for 70 jobs and received offers for none.
RICKY
Having been in the AAA side of the video game industry for over 20 years, Ricky (not their real name) has filed their share of job applications. “I’ve always applied responsibly to roles I know I’m a fit for, and have generally spoken with the hiring manager at least. This changed dramatically last year. It’s much more common now to not hear back at all”.
In the cases they do hear back, Ricky says the companies seem “completely disorganized and unprofessional”.
“I once received a boiler plate ‘thanks for applying, we don't think you're a fit’ email from a studio I applied to, then an hour later I received a template ‘we just saw your profile online and think you're a great fit’ email from the same studio for the same role.”
For another application, they received a "not a fit" response, then immediately afterwards received a "disregard, still in consideration" email, then was completely ghosted.
“I've also been completely ghosted by two different studios after an HR screen and second interview with the project director”, they say. “HR said they were interested and reviewing other candidates. I reached out three weeks later to hear one role had been filled and never heard back from the others at all.”
Ricky stresses these are not startups or struggling indie studios, they’re AAA companies. They suspect that some of these listings are “either just collecting data, browsing the buyers market, are a result of HR departments that have been gutted by layoffs and are using bad AI tools to automate, or all of the above”.
In another example of a busted recruitment process, Ricky says they spent eight weeks working with a major games company planning a project with a large IP holder, during which they completed nine interviews, performed a two-week practical test, and then a further week of panel interviews before meeting department leads.
“Through the entire process, nobody could tell me what the actual day to day of the role was, or what they were actually making”, Ricky says. “I never met with anyone that actually makes games. Two weeks later, I was told I was ‘not a fit’”.
Given Ricky’s past experience applying for AAA jobs in bygone eras, another change they’ve noticed lately is that job application processes have stretched well past their traditional length. “Where job applications usually wrapped in two weeks, now it's common to still be dragging along 4-6 weeks after an initial response, with no sign of resolution”, they say. “I had to take a temp contract because I got an offer in the middle of two other processes that had been taking over a month each. I couldn't risk passing on the offer in hand and had to stop one application. One studio recommended continuing the process regardless. I met with the project lead, then was completely ghosted. Glad I took the contract.”
GWEN
Gwen’s story is the shortest you’ll see today, but also perhaps the most representative of how broken video game recruitment is right now. An author and game designer, she recently applied for a role that involved 12 interviews with 15 different people at a single studio. After all that, she was ghosted.
She says she also recently applied for a position with Wizards of the Coast, who flew her out for an all-day interview, even paying for a hotel stay. And then ghosted her.
CALLUM
Callum (not their real name) was laid off in July 2024. Having made many job applications since, there’s one in particular they describe as especially frustrating.
“I went through the interview process for my dream role at my dream company in October 2024”, they say, “and after the final round interview, was told they ended up going with someone else, but it was a hard decision and I was their second choice, which made me feel good!”
“Then in May of this year, I saw the same company had posted the same role so I reached out to the recruiter. He got back to me right away, said I’d be ‘the candidate to beat’ (his exact words) and said he’d set up an interview with the team just to go through the process.”
“Weeks passed, I followed up a few times, each time being told the team was swamped and it would be a week or so before anything progressed. After the final follow-up the recruiter told me they had decided to close the position. So in the span of two months, the company opened the position, the recruiter led me to believe I was a shoo-in, and then the company decided they didn’t actually want to hire anyone for it. Brutal. And this is a big well-established AAA company.”
Another job they applied for, at another established studio, asked Callum to complete a 12-page writing test, and while sending the test out “forgot to bcc everyone”, so Callum knew they were among roughly 20 other applicants. After completing the test they were asked not to follow up, but after 4-5 months with no response, they reached out anyway.
“The email in response was ‘thank you so much for interviewing with us, it was great to talk with you, we decided to go with someone else’ which would have been fine except they never even interviewed me!! They couldn’t even keep track of the people they had asked to do unpaid labor!”
“Also just an anecdote that I feel best represents how bad it's gotten in games over the past years: in 2022 I applied for two jobs and received offers for both. In 2024-5 I applied for 70 jobs and received offers for none”.
It’s honestly been a bloodbath. I haven’t had this much trouble finding work since I first joined the industry.
JASON
“I applied months ago at Doublefine, for a ‘Senior Systems Generalist’ posting”, says Jason (not their real name). “They were advertising it on Bluesky.”
“I never really expected to get the job, because I've always been indie, I figured it would go to some laid-off AAA guy for sure, but I'm like whatever, I have 12 years of experience, I can code, I can do art, I'm a generalist, I've technically lead teams before”. So they wrote a cover letter, updated their resume and applied.
“And I fired it off and didn't really think much of it, but once a month or so, I would get an email from them like ‘Sorry for the wait! We're gonna start reviewing emails next week! Our people have just been going through it’ or whatever, which like, fair enough.”
“They eventually sent everyone an email saying ‘Oh we decided not to hire anybody after all, sorry’, and it was very funny to me”.
JARORY
Jarory was cast into the job market when the studio he had been working at was not paying them enough to live in San Francisco (where the position was based). When he tried to shift to a different studio he ended up being laid off from the former, while the latter ended up not hiring them, leaving him stuck without a job.
“Since then I’ve applied for over 200 jobs”, he says. “I have eight years experience, a Master’s degree, three shipped titles plus mobile titles. I’m one of the very few narrative designers who can code in C++, but despite this for the most part I’ve been unable to even get to a first round interview with studios in the US”.
He has had slightly more luck with European studios, but those needed Jarory to either relocate or cover the (often expensive) cost of visas. He also says he has received personal referrals for applications, from “high level people” at very well-known companies, without ever getting even an interview.
“It’s honestly been a bloodbath”, he says. “I haven’t had this much trouble finding work since I first joined the industry”.
AARON
Aaron can sum up his job search very easily: “it’s pretty much been a complete nightmare, to be honest”. Citing many of the same concerns other applicants have expressed, like rampant ghosting and confusing replies from recruiters, Aaron at least has some sympathy for those working in recruitment.
“I don't really blame them a ton”, he says. “I think there are just so many folks out of jobs that there are just so many applicants for every single role, and loads of them are highly qualified professionals, all trying to scrape up the bits and pieces available on the market still”.
What’s got to Aaron the most, though, is the rapidly increasing prevalence of a more menacing hurdle for job applicants. “The real shocking thing about the whole process has been the ramping up of scams”, he says. “There are so many job postings that are scams now, and the platform doesn't seem to matter. They're all over LinkedIn, Indeed, Glassdoor, etc”.
“They usually pose as some credible company, attempt to get some manner of personal information, and then go ‘congrats you're hired! no interview required, you will make tons of money!’ etc etc. At first, it was pretty obvious which was which, but with the sheer amount of them out there now and the fact that they're getting more complex, it feels like a minefield”.
The worst example he's encountered was someone who pretended to be the business manager of a school district in Texas, who was hiring for a position Aaron was qualified for. This scammer had an email address that looked just like the school’s actual email, but in one spot had used “l” (lower-case L) instead of “i”. This imposter was asking very similar questions to those an actual recruiter would be expected to ask, and it was only when Aaron called the school district and spoke with the person the scammer had been impersonating that they discovered it was a fake.
“By the time I had confirmed this, of course, the posting had been removed from LinkedIn, making me feel like I had just suffered through the plot of a really, really lame M. Night Shyamalan plot”, he says. “Other than that, the scams are as frequent as they are relentless; phone calls and texts for fake jobs completely blow up my phone each and every day”.
...the scams are as frequent as they are relentless; phone calls and texts for fake jobs completely blow up my phone each and every day.
YORRICK
Yorrick (not their real name) has had an absolutely wild time trying to find a new job in video games, so much so that I’m going to tell their story the same way they they told it to me: via unranked list.
- They once had to perform a week-long test, clocking in at around 40 full hours of work, all because they say the recruiting studio wanted “a level design portion (which isn't my wheelhouse at all), a written brief, and then about two in-game hours' worth of recursive branching content”. They were then told that the single person responsible for reviewing every applicant’s test was out on vacation.
- A project manager once accidentally cced 55 applicants for a position, which did lead to a bunch of “reply all” responses, but no further communication from the recruiter.
- After taking a different week-long test (this one “only” taking 20 hours), Yorrick “was told consistently throughout the process I was a ‘yes’ for the people involved, I got to the very last stage, and then was beaten out by someone because I expressed too much empathy as a lead and a manager”.
- Yorrick says recruiters have specifically reached out to them asking them to submit applications, only for those applications to be met with automated rejection emails.
- It's not the most heinous thing in this story, but apparently Blizzard is notorious for sending rejection emails on Sunday mornings.
- After getting far enough along in an application that they had completed a test, chatted with a recruiter and then met some of the team, Yorrick was told at the last minute that, due to the studio’s funding running dry, “the position was going away for an indefinite amount of time”.
- Yorrick says few if any jobs can now offer any kind of security, with interstate or even international moves now an enormous risk, and more and more contract positions (which often don’t offer stuff like health insurance) opening up instead of permanent jobs. “I'm afraid to apply for out-of-the-country jobs because relatively few of them are subject to listing what the job pays; some of them are in spots with good incentives for the business but very little for the employee”, they say, specifically mentioning “places like Ireland and Warsaw”.
- They say they no longer list that they’re disabled, nor do they mention they’re non-binary. “It's everywhere on my social media and Linkedin profile, but I'm afraid to rock the boat. Let them call me what they want”.
- Yorrick is now part of a number of “find work” groups where members are “growing increasingly jaded towards the idea of staying in the video games industry”. “More resources are being published about how to move from the industry into another field”, they say, “I'm afraid I may have to go that direction, too”.
JILL
Jill is lucky enough to be among the ranks of the employed–”I can’t technically get laid off because I’m always just piecing together scraps of freelance contracts”--but they do have some very first-hand experience with one of the worst bugbears we’ve been looking at today: the fake recruiter.
“Currently someone is using my company name, and the names of two colleagues from other studios, in a hiring scam”, they say. “The scammers approach people using a Substack email address, then try to get them to join a Discord, where the coercion happens. At least one person says they have fallen for this. A lot of people find my contact details elsewhere and message me saying ‘I think this is a scam but in case it isn’t, please look at my portfolio’”.
What makes cases like this, and the small Texas school mentioned above, especially upsetting is that Jill “can't think of a single reason a scammer would impersonate my wee studio”, having never done a “hiring push” or been seen to be big enough that scammers could trade off their reputation. “I'm told my name carries some amount of credibility, but scammers are quite specifically not using my name”, Jill says. “Instead, they're using my studio's name and the names of the heads of two other studios-- friends and people I've worked with-- information you could get from a LinkedIn crawl”.
“Perhaps the diminutive size of Discoglobe, combined with my larger game credits, and the use of related names creates a plausible swirl of confusion that's harder to investigate”.
Jill says the way the scam works–or at least in their case–is that the targeted applicant receives a message in the form of a private Substack email, supposedly from one of Jill’s colleagues. That email invites them to apply for a specific role, but in order to make that application, the applicant needs to add the scammer on Discord. If the applicant accepts, they’re then encouraged on Discord to reveal personal and financial information.
“Although it can feel like a compliment and a relief to be offered potential work, unsolicited invitations from unfamiliar contacts should be treated with maximum suspicion”, Jill warns. “No reputable hiring manager should ask you to join a Discord to prove your identity, or confirm your interest by divulging financial information or anything else that could make you more vulnerable”.
“That said, many actual, real, recruiters do use uncomfortable tactics-- forcing you to take personality quizzes, refusing to tell you what game you'll be working on, demanding lengthy unpaid tests, to name a few. Considering the climate of disrespect that these practices have made commonplace, it's not surprising that the boundaries between opportunity and scam are so thin”.
XAVIER
Xavier’s (not their real name) experience applying for jobs has been one dominated by AI automation, which they say is “way more widespread” now than even a couple of years ago.
One example they provided was for a company hiring a Brand Manager position. “They initially got me in with the automated ‘import your resume’ option. Then they almost immediately contacted me back, and asked for my availability. Somehow, they ruined that process because I couldn’t even get a cohesive response back if I asked about anything-- the company culture or pay”.
“Then, when I actually did get to do the video interview, it wasn't even with a person but more of a reality show tryout video where you don't even get feedback. I don't know, the whole thing was weird vibes and I didn't get anything back. I did however start getting spam on my looking-for-work-only email, so who knows”!
I had a conversation with a recruiter at a smaller (around 300 people) studio and he told me each job opening had around 3000-4000 applicants per role.
STEVE
Steve has had two experiences lately where they’ve “sat down with people to discuss open roles for that have only then revealed, halfway through the initial discussion, that it's actually a freelance role”.
“I'm not adverse to doing some freelance stuff, but I'd appreciate going in prepared so I can talk about rates/set expectations etc”. They were also contacted directly by a freelance recruiter, specifically to discuss freelance work, only to then have that person “disappear into the wind” and never get back to them, and in another case was halfway through an interview before the recruiter disclosed the project in question was actually a Web3 title, something that hadn’t been disclosed publicly and which is still being hidden from the project’s Steam page.
“I've applied for HUNDREDS of jobs on LinkedIn through their Easy Apply thing, which I'm convinced is just data mining”, they say. “I've had so many dodgy calls on my phone since I started job hunting, and I get multiple texts and WhatsApp messages from ‘TikTok HR’ and ‘Tribe HR’ every week now. It's exhausting because I want to pick up every phone call in case it's a real job and it's usually just a fucking scam”.
“I'd booked an interview with someone on the 14th of July who said they were starting interviews on the 8th of August”, Steve recalls, adding, “I got an email cancelling the interview and when I chased them to check in or re-book they told me they'd filled the position”.
They say it’s both “reassuring and demoralising” to be constantly told that, having applied for jobs with 500 other candidates, making it to interview rounds with only four other people and then missing out the job, they’re told stuff like "a year ago you'd have walked into this position".
DORA
Dora has been applying for a variety of full-time roles across production management, including senior producer and production manager jobs.
“Last year I applied for a production manager role with a publisher owned by a multi-millionaire who had worked in tech but never in games, and didn't hear anything from them for about three months, until they asked for an intro interview with someone on staff who turned out to be their marketing manager”, they recall. “The interview was fine, though a lot of the questions they asked me were specifically about items or duties that hadn't been outlined in the job post, and they weren't able to answer any of the production questions I had”.
“They seemed quite keen on me and so set up interviews with–literally–everyone else on staff, which worked out to be almost a full day of interviews back to back to back, and then a final one with their CEO the week after, who informed me directly that everyone had loved me and spoke very highly of me. They promised to get back to me before the end of that week”.
“Instead, almost another full month went by, with them saying they were ‘taking the review very seriously’ until I woke up one morning to a generic form rejection that had come in around 3AM, saying ‘they appreciated my interest, and there was a lot of competition, but they were moving forward with another candidate’”.
Dora says the company never responded to a request for notes or feedback, which was probably for the best; after multiple turnovers, the studio in question has now laid off nearly the entire staff.
We’ve become scapegoats in a system we didn’t build, want and can’t really control.
PETER
Peter (not their real name) is one of the more empathetic people I spoke to; while they’re obviously clearly frustrated with the entire application and hiring process across the industry, they do at least say it’s “hard to really blame things” on recruiters. “Everyone definitely seems to be trying to do their best with the cards they're dealt”, they say. “I try to be understanding when it comes to the fact that even though I'm unemployed and stressed, these people are under extreme undue stress as well. Everyone is getting shuffled around from team to team and given larger and larger workloads. So I try to accommodate people as much as I can throughout any interview process”.
They also have an idea why so many studios and publishers are using recruitment agencies instead of hiring directly. “I had a conversation with a recruiter at a smaller (around 300 people) studio and he told me each job opening had around 3000-4000 applicants per role. So I understand the daunting task of figuring that out”.
That said, Peter has still been running into frustrating roadblocks in the search for work. “A recruiter from a ‘top 5’ game developer reached out to me for a role I was very interested in”, they say. “We quickly set up an interview with the manager of that team, which went very well (as indicated by the recruiter), and they said they'd get back to me shortly to set up an additional interview. Weeks pass and I didn't hear anything so obviously I was very confused. It wasn't until I decided to follow up with them on Linkedin that I saw that not only [was the recruiter] laid off from the company, but the manager I interviewed with was as well”!
Peter is also another with first-hand experience with job scams. “A recruiter reached out to my email and said he was recruiting for a gaming job but did not disclose the company”, Peter says. “He sent a job description, and it fit my background closely so I agreed to a phone call. He called me and explained that the job was for a specific gaming company and said he could set up an interview with the hiring manager by the end of the week. I was ecstatic because it was a role at a dream company I really was interested in and was very excited”.
“He told me that in order to do the role I needed a specific tech certification and that if I did not currently have it, I could do it during the interview process and finish it up while I was on my first few weeks of the job. I didn't think too much of it because it was a certification I've heard of and was definitely real. He then told me he'd send me a link to the course that the company usually uses and once I show that I'm signed up we can proceed with the process”.
“After the call I went to the site and upon further inspection it was VERY shady. It was definitely thrown together in a very shoddy way and more or less a glorified phishing attempt to get my credit card information. I'm very lucky I realized this. I emailed him back and told him I did not feel comfortable paying $300 for a chance to interview at the company and politely declined to proceed. He then called and emailed me 5-10 times desperately trying to get back in touch with me in a last ditch effort to get me to sign up for whatever fake course they had set up. Obviously this is some scam team targeting gaming candidates to try to scam their credit card information”.
PAULA
Paula (not their real name) is one of the few people in this story who isn't currently applying for positions, because they work in recruitment. With a long career in the space, first for a AAA studio and now a games services firm, Paula says many in their industry “understand how brutal it is for job seekers, because we’re experiencing it too”, as restructures, closures and layoffs haven’t just affected jobseekers, but those in recruitment as well.
“We’re seeing senior-level talent applying for lower level roles, which pushes everyone down the funnel and effectively wipes out the usual expectation of entry”, they explain. “Beyond that, there’s been a massive shift away from U.S.-based hiring. Studios are moving headcount to Eastern Europe, Latin America, and other regions with high quality talent at lower cost. It’s very similar to what we saw decades ago in manufacturing, it’s just now hitting tech and games, which has often been seen as the Wild West. We’re following a pattern similar to film in that sense”.
“As recruiters, we’re deeply aware of how this impacts people”, Paula says, “but we don’t always have the power to fix it. Most of us are doing everything we can to support candidates, advocate internally, and help companies hire wisely in this new landscape, but there are limits to what we can do, especially as many [recruiters] fear for their own job security”.
As someone working in recruitment, Paula is able to see the application process from a unique vantage, and some of the numbers involved are staggering. “A few years ago, a mid-level role might see 2,000–3,000 applicants over a couple of weeks”, they say. “Now? That same role can bring in six, nine or even twelve thousand applicants. Within 48 hours”.
“We have to close roles much earlier than we’d like just to manage the influx. Not to mention there’s still an expectation from both candidates and sometimes leadership that we not only review every one of those applications (we should and I strive to) but also give specific feedback or custom communications. That’s just not feasible with leaner teams, low morale, and higher workloads”.
While most of those we’ve spoken to haven’t had the best experiences with the application process, Paula says that everyone is working in an “unprecedented landscape”, and stresses “how demoralizing it is to be a recruiter right now”.
“We’re publicly visible, our names are on job posts, we’re often the first ones who pop up when you search [for a role] and many times we’re often the only human contact a candidate has during a brutal, sometimes years-long job search. So when people feel unheard, overlooked, or just burned out… they come for us”.
“We’ve become scapegoats in a system we didn’t build, want and can’t really control. Recruiters have always carried a strange burden as we’re expected to be operationally flawless and endlessly empathetic. We want to champion candidates, we want you hired and many of us are here because we care deeply. But some of the public backlash we’re facing (especially online) has been painful and unfair”.
“Everything I talked about today isn’t just tech or games, it’s happening across industries. I’m not an economist. I don’t know exactly how we got here or what’s next. But I do know this: the only way forward is with kindness, grace, and awareness. I wish more people understood, regardless of if you’re a candidate or a company, your brand is your behavior, and how you show up now (especially in this very bleak timeline) matters”.
Just as there’s no single issue facing applicants here, there doesn’t appear to be a single solution to their problems, either. Unemployed video game developers are suffering through possibly the worst set of industry circumstances since there’s been an industry to hire them: a collapsing market, AI, feckless major publishers and cost-slashing CEOs. All of this coming so soon after a hiring boom doesn’t help either; the entire video game industry has collectively inhaled then exhaled over the course of around five years, first hiring tens of thousands of people, then cutting them loose just as quickly.
There are simply too many applicants for not enough jobs, and no amount of tweaks to the hiring process itself can change that, as recruiters are often at the mercy of the same systemic issues. They too have seen layoffs, and had hiring processes undermined by AI, or had in-house recruitment scrapped altogether in favour of bringing in outside firms with little experience in the highly-specialized field of technical games recruitment.
Surely there’s something that can be done, though, if only to make the whole ordeal a little less soul-crushing. As someone who used to work in recruitment–for a job hiring 50 people from 5500 applicants–we were taught (like Paula mentions above) that there was a responsibility not just to hire the right people, but to make sure we treated the unsuccessful as best as we could. Because while sometimes an applicant for a job is just someone shooting their shot, in many cases it’s a person who is vulnerable. Maybe they’re desperate for a career change because of ownership or management making their current role unbearable, or (as is often the case in games right now) they urgently need money because they’ve lost their job, putting everything from their homes to their health to their families on the line.
Those people, even if they’re not ultimately hired, even with all the challenges facing everyone in the industry (even recruitment), still deserve to be treated with more courtesy and respect than they’re getting at the moment.
