The wave of layoffs is still burning until 2024.
On January 25, Microsoft's gaming division announced mass layoffs affecting a total of 1,900 people, mainly from Activision Blizzard, which Microsoft acquired for $68.7 billion last October. While some employees in the Zenimax and Xbox divisions were also affected, the layoffs were mostly concentrated within Blizzard.
And just a few days ago, Tencent's Riot Games Company also ushered in a layoff. Riot Games, the U.S. developer behind League of Legends and Valorant, said it plans to lay off 530 people worldwide, or about 11 percent of its workforce. Coincidentally, last month, NetEase also started a large-scale layoff mode, and the game department was also involved.
According to videogamelayoff, a layoff statistics platform for the game industry, tens of thousands of people have been laid off in the global game industry in 2023. Now, less than a month into 2024, the turmoil continues.
While the scale of layoffs in Microsoft's gaming division is staggering, they are only a microcosm of the recent frequent layoffs in the global gaming industry.
A VR game company that has a "bad year".
Under the influence of many factors such as the economic downturn, the slowdown in the growth of the game market, and the intensification of competition, the global game industry is experiencing an unprecedented winter, and so is the VR game industry.
Just this month, there have been a number of VR game studios laying off employees.
Foreign media reported that Wimo Games, a VR game developer in the United States, has ceased operations. While the studio has yet to make an official statement, several of its employees have confirmed the layoffs on LinkedIn and social media. Wimo Games has previously released VR games including Battle Bow and Micro Machines: Mini Challenge Mayhem, the latter of which just hit Quest and Steam on January 4, but sales have not been good.
First Contact Entertainment, the VR game studio that developed the popular games Firewall Zero Hour and Firewall Ultra for PSVR and PSVR2, also announced its closure, much to the regret of many VR enthusiasts. In addition to the Firewall series, First Contact also developed Solaris Offworld Comba, a team-based shooter on the PSVR and Oculus platforms.
In this regard, some people in the community believe that First Contact Entertainment, which focuses on the high-quality route of large-scale productions but has failed to make a hit, has been difficult to attract investors to continue to burn money to support them.
Firewall Ultra, Source: Network.
In addition, Archiact, one of the largest independent VR developers, also recently announced through social media ** that it is currently laying off employees and hopes to contact studios interested in hiring to help employees in roles including animation, art, audio, engineering, game design, narrative, publishing, IT and QA. This means that this layoff covers almost all departments, and the impact is considerable.
In addition to the recent past, in November last year, the entire team of ByteDance's PICO first-party game studio's completely self-developed VR music game "Shining Rhyme Realm" was laid off. Previously, "Shining Spirit" was the third most popular product in the PICO community. (For more information, click: "Tears!") PICO bids farewell to players, where is the road of domestic VR games? 》）
Flash Rhyme Spiritual Realm, source: Internet.
In April last year, Meta laid off several employees at its VR game studios Ready at Dawn and Downpour Interactive. According to Thomas Griebel, programmer at Ready At Dawn's advanced graphics engine, one-third of the staff was laid off, including studio heads, CFOs, and more. "Echo VR", which was once called "the best multiplayer** game", has also become an "outcast" in the context of Meta's 2023 efficiency year.
While these events may not be directly related to VR, they are a wake-up call for the industry.
Economical pot? The pot of the market decline?
Why are VR game manufacturers laying off employees?
The recession is one of the reasons, and layoffs have become a direct way for companies to reduce costs and increase efficiency.
In fact, there are many reasons why the VR game industry has not been able to grow: first, VR games still lack popular 3A masterpieces, although many game developers have entered the game, but the audience of VR game products on the market is still small, and there is no VR game that can be widely recognized by players, which has directly led to the lack of follow-up investment in VR games, and developers have become more cautious when developing new VR games.
Although there are some exciting new VR games in 2024, such as Meta Quest's new VR game Behemoth, which is developed by the famous Skydance Interactive and the developer of The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners. But after all, 2024 has just begun, and it is still unknown how it will perform in the future.
VR game Behemoth, source: Internet.
Secondly, VR games lack a unified platform, and often when players want to buy a product, they need to buy a series of supporting devices, and the consumption level will become higher. However, the current VR equipment still has the problem of "wearing", and long-term wearing is still easy to cause users to have a series of uncomfortable feelings, such as: nausea, dizziness, vomiting, etc.
In recent years, the incident of being "**" in VR games has also happened repeatedly. According to a 2018 survey on VR sexual harassment conducted by Polish market research agency The Extended Mind and VR social platform Pluto VR, 49% of women and 36% of men reported experiencing at least sexual harassment, including verbal sexual harassment, physical touching, stalking, and displaying ** movements.
In addition, from the perspective of China's policy support, based on the relevant policies and plans of VR technology at the national level, various provinces and cities have launched policies and plans related to VR integrated applications, mainly concentrated in VR + sports, VR + cultural tourism and other related fields, and there are still relatively few provinces and cities that focus on VR game development policies and plans.
However, with the advent of more new hardware, such as Apple's Vision Pro and Meta Quest 3, it may be possible to provide gamers with a more immersive environment for a better gaming experience. In addition, in recent years, domestic game companies and studios have paid more and more attention to the content research and development of VR games, and domestic VR game content is gaining momentum. Finally, I still hope that the VR game track can develop more quickly and healthily.
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