Ex-Sony Computer Entertainment Europe president Chris Deering does not believe recent layoffs across the games industry have been a result of corporate greed. Instead, workers who have lost their jobs should “drive an Uber” or “go to the beach for a year” until employment settles.
Deering was a guest on games writer Simon Parkin’s podcast My Perfect Console, where the pair discussed games industry layoffs.
“I don’t think it’s fair to say that the resulting layoffs have been greed,” said Deering. “I always tried to minimise the speed with which we added staff because I always knew there would be a cycle and I didn’t want to end up having the same problems that Sony did in Electronics.”
Deering acknowledged recent layoffs at Sony, including the London Studio, but noted “if the money isn’t coming in from the consumers on the last game, it’s going to be hard to justify spending the money for the next game”.
He continued: “I think it’s probably very painful for the managers, but I don’t think that having skill in this area [of game dev] is going to be a lifetime of poverty or limitation. It’s still where the action is, and it’s like the pandemic but now you’re going to have to take a few…figure out how to get through it, drive an Uber or whatever, go off to find a cheap place to live and go to the beach for a year. But keep up with your news and keep up with it, because once you get off the train, it’s much harder.”
That said, Deering is “optimistic” about the future for workers who have been laid off. “These things do recover sometimes a lot faster than you might think, when all is very precarious,” he said. “I presume people were paid some kind of a decent severance package and by the time that runs out…Well, you know, that’s life.”
Deering entered the games industry as vice president of international marketing for Atari, before eventually moving to Sony by way of Columbia Pictures. He served as president of SCEE from 1995 to 2005, during which time the company launched the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 consoles.
In February, Sony laid off 900 PlayStation employees (around eight percent of its workforce), which included closing London Studio and reductions at Firesprite studio.
This was among many other rounds of layoffs across the industry. By May 2024 this year, over 10,000 people in the games industry had been laid off. Now, that figure has risen to over 11,500.
Most recently, the Embracer-owned studio Lost Boys was impacted by layoffs.
So why are these layoffs occurring? GamesIndustry.biz’s Chris Dring explains.