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* Careers in video games industry
* Engineering career…
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Tolga Tekin reposted thisCome join us! Our project in Riot R&D is looking for a Staff Software Engineer to oversee our core audio technology and pipelines. You’ll be working closely with me and my team, alongside some other awesome developers on a game I’m really proud to work on. Please note that this is not a sound design or technical sound design position, and check the posting for more info! https://lnkd.in/gEg2Hspx Staff Software Engineer, Audio - Unpublished R&D Product | Riot GamesStaff Software Engineer, Audio - Unpublished R&D ProductStaff Software Engineer, Audio - Unpublished R&D Product
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Tolga Tekin reposted thisTolga Tekin reposted thisI'm looking to hire a Software Engineering Manager for our Match Services team. This team is responsible for the matchmaking and skill progression that keeps VALORANT the most competitive game in the world. There is so much more for this team to do - if you have experience building matchmaking or meta systems and managing strong senior engineers, I encourage you to reach out or apply! If you're unsure or have questions, I'll respond to any DMs. Good luck on your games! https://lnkd.in/gTMpQqh5Manager, Software Engineering - VALORANT, Competitive, Match ServicesManager, Software Engineering - VALORANT, Competitive, Match Services
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Tolga Tekin reposted thisTolga Tekin reposted thisHello friends! I have an exciting opportunity to share: Riot's MMO team is looking for a Principal UX Designer! Unreal implementation experience is a big plus for this one. You would have to relocate to either Washington or California for this role. There is no mandatory office attendance. If you have additional questions, feel free to message me. https://lnkd.in/gB3hQh-b
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Tolga Tekin reposted thisTolga Tekin reposted thisYour #Worlds2024 anthem and music video are here. “Heavy is the Crown” ft. Linkin Park is out now: riot.com/4dmcv1nHeavy is the Crown - Linkin Park - Worlds Anthem and Music Video 2024Heavy is the Crown - Linkin Park - Worlds Anthem and Music Video 2024
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Tolga Tekin reposted thisTolga Tekin reposted thisApplications are now open for 2025 software engineering internships at Riot! https://riot.com/3sGKzUi
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Tolga Tekin posted thisRegarding CrowdStrike social media is filled with takes that IMO misses the mark: * “A null pointer was the issue. CS education should be made a priority” - some CS professor (Side note: The null pointer issue was debunked later) * “<Insert some Linux distribution> should be used everywhere” - some Linux fan * “We should build our own OS in our country” - some nationalistic billionaire and their followers * “Memory managed languages should be abondoned, use <some other language> from now on” - some other language lover Etc… Look, I don’t remember working on a software that doesn’t end up with bugs. In real world perfect architecture, language, systems don’t exist. New OS’es, new languages, more CS education, more careful developers, nations building their OS’es etc… will not change that fact. There are 100s of OS’es available out there already. They are not preferred by major IT departments for many reasons, missing capabilities, their staff’s unfamiliarity, trust to the operations and support of the OS developer etc... And a lot of these are massive hurdles OS manufacturers need to deal with. Sure there is some trust wobble now towards Microsoft, but IT departments will not change their OS over night even with this incident. Most IT departments have deep investments to their OS choice. (And I’m writing this as primarily a macOS user) Ok, If all these takes are poor, what’s my take? I’m actually surprised no one is talking about the real root cause - improper testing and release processes, specifically; * Not using representative hardware in testing * Not having an incremental rollout for release * Not having proper rollback process Bugs will always exist, but their risks need to be properly managed by early detection, by making their surface area smaller, and by quick/easy incident response. These are not new or novel ideas. All of these approaches are used in top high tech companies. Not sure why that wasn’t the case at CrowdStrike. But that’s the area they will have to focus on. So what will happen next? My prediction is: * Disasters are great catalysts for culture and management changes. CrowdStrike will start investing in better release processes. * Disasters also cause us to overreact. There might be some downtrend in MS’s OS popularity (but not an overnight massive change) depending on how quickly MS and CrowdStrike can rebuild trust. But I have a feeling 6 months later folks will not remember this incident while continue to utilize Windows machines. What are your thoughts?
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Tolga Tekin posted this“AI will replace all software developer jobs” In my career I have heard this so many times for so many technologies. * “No-code / low-code platforms will replace developers” * “Serverless architecture will replace backend developers” * “Simplicity of React and Angular over jQuery will kill frontend jobs” * “Code completion will make software engineers faster, in turn we will need them less” * “WYSIWYG editors will kill jobs…” * “With Unreal engine, we won’t need programmers anymore. Anyone will be able to make games” * “Automated test generation will kill QA jobs” Etc… A lot of folks are forgetting how fast the underlying complexity is also changing. * The amount of frontend code we need for a website exponentially increased from 90s to now * The amount of code a software depends on is growing everyday. * As games hardware getting a lot more capable, we need a lot more content created and increased code complexity * As backend hardware is getting cheaper we can build a lot more complicated and harder to maintain services Without some automation and developer efficiency, it is impossible to keep up with the complexity and the needed developer demand. Imagine writing today’s software with punch cards… We would need a couple of order of magnitude of more developers. “But with the past advances didn’t the developer jobs required skills to change?” Yes! We needed to master new tools, work with higher abstractions, think about different problems and adopt to new practices. Folks that couldn’t adopt did indeed end up irrelevant. And the story will continue. Folks will learn to utilize AI, use it as an abstraction. But given how fast the capabilities and demand are increasing we will still need more developers. One thing I’m expecting, AI will lower the barrier for simple software needs. More non-CS folks will be able to solve some simpler but interesting problems. (Kinda reminds me of introduction of Excel and VB) But I’m not expecting it to lower the demand for complex SE jobs anytime soon. Not until we have major advances in general AI which are IMO decades away. But then all jobs (lawyers, doctors etc…) will be replaced, probably by folks coding and maintaining that said AI… “But companies are laying off folks in droves due to AI? Didn’t AI layoffs already start?” The reasons for layoffs are a lot more complex than this sentence. * With Covid we had one of the biggest tech booms of all time. Many companies doubled/tripled in size. This wasn’t sustainable. * Now things are cooling down, companies start to focus on cost optimizations. High growth times just mean unoptimized growth, you postpone cost optimizations due to opportunity cost. But eventually spiraling costs become hard to ignore. * There is indeed major investing and focus toward AI. But this just means some restructuring towards AI development. IMO this is just a correction. Once the spike corrects itself, things will get back to its normal course.
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Tolga Tekin shared thisCover letters get a bad rep, but I agree with Jordan Mazer. They are a good way to stand out if done well. I would recommend applicants to use them. In general, my rule of thumb for hiring is to use information that doesn't create any bias and showcases some relevant skills for the position. (eg: -quick rant- I don't care if someone uses the "open to work" flair or not on LinkedIn. Using it as information for hiring is bias-inducing, and using/not using it doesn't showcase a skill...) Cover letters do showcase communication skills, research the candidate put towards the company and the position, understand the company's needs and market, motivations & excitement, personal advocacy, reflect their strengths & weaknesses, and how well they think they match the position. I think one problem is, that many hiring managers have seen many poor cover letters and we don't expect much from them. Copy-paste, just talking about themselves, very long, generic points that have nothing to do with the company or position they are applying to, a repeat of their resume etc... And these types of cover letters just get ignored. Great ones that stand out answer these two questions; * Why you are excited about the position and the company * Why do you think you are a match specifically to that position? And that's it, there should be nothing else in there. It should be short, exciting, and sweet.Tolga Tekin shared thisApplying to a job and want to stand out? Don’t be lazy, write a cover letter 😤😤😤 ❌ A cover letter IS NOT ❌ --> Your life epic --> Multi-page --> Multi-paragraph >> No one reads THAT version of a cover letter << ✅ A great cover letter IS ✅ --> 3-4 sentences --> resonant --> specific It should take 5 minutes to write. Will every recruiter read it? Of course not. But some will read it, and those 3-4 sentences could be what sets you apart from 10 other qualified candidates and land you an interview. In a market where hundreds or thousands of candidates are applying for the same job, small advantages can prove invaluable. Don’t leave the low-hanging fruit to rot. Don’t be lazy. Write 4 sentences to give yourself an edge in an increasingly crowded candidate market.
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Tolga Tekin posted thisRecently I am reviewing a lot of resumes to help my unfortunate friends that are laid off. The most common mistakes I see are; 1) Talking about what you did more than your accomplishments and impact Statements like these: “developed an application in Java, implemented features, project managed, was a scrum master” etc…, makes HMs get curious about these questions: “But were you successful? How did you measure success? How did you do according to this measurement? With that work what kind of value your company gained?” etc… HMs care about measurable accomplishments more so than just doing things blindly. Accomplishments make the resume standout more and a lot more impactful. I’m not saying every statement needs to be an accomplishment, but you need some accomplishments mentioned. There are many articles online about this, “X-Y-Z formula” is a common technique to use. 2) Not tailoring your resume to position you are applying The first step in recruitment process is almost always a resume review, which involves someone, potentially not in your craft, to compare the resume to the position requirements. So make sure your resume showcases all the things they are looking for very clearly. Relevant experiences with technologies and skills they care should be mentioned. If this requires you to have multiple resumes, even one per job, so be it. You want to standout among the competition. 3) Using big paragraphs instead of bullet points Bullet points might sound a bit mechanical but they make the resumes very easy to read. Big paragraphs just frustrate the resume reviewers. 4) Not keeping things simple and readable I don’t remember a single case where an applicant was preferred due to a fancy resume. Content and readability are a lot more important. 5) Lots of typos and grammar mistakes Gives an impression of lack of attention to detail and sloppiness. There are many online tools to check typos and grammar. 6) Too long resume No resume reviewer will be happy to go through a 10 page resume. Focus on recent and relevant experience more. HMs don’t care that much the details of your job or school projects from 10+ years ago. For folks that are fairly new in the industry (5- years) I would say a single page resume is enough. For more experienced folks, don’t pass 2 pages. What do you all think? Am I missing anything?
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Tolga Tekin liked thisTolga Tekin liked thisExcited to see a bunch of new and old faces at Unreal Fest 2026 in June! I'll be presenting session "Game Feature Plugins for Live Service Games at Riot". Come check it out if you can! Session link: https://lnkd.in/ghBMgufU
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Tolga Tekin liked thisTolga Tekin liked thisI’m happy to share that I’m now a Senior Software Engineering Manager at Riot Games! 🥰💖 thanks for all the incredible people and great support around me ✨
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Tolga Tekin reacted on thisTolga Tekin reacted on thisI started my dream job last week! I'm happy to announce I'm a UX Director on Diablo IV at Blizzard Entertainment. As a young gamer, Blizzard was my gold standard. When I was a college student, working for Blizzard was the dream. It's been a very long journey through the twists and turns of the game industry to get to this point. I've met so many amazing people and worked on many incredible projects, but now it feels like I'm returning to what made me want to make games in the first place. My family and I will be moving to the Irvine area in July. For those who know me well, yes, I will be getting Disneyland season passes. :D Thank you, everyone. Whether we made games together, helped one another land jobs, learned something from one another, or simply provided words of encouragement, I wouldn't be here if it weren't for you.
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Tolga Tekin reacted on thisTolga Tekin reacted on thisFour years ago I joined Riot- and tomorrow I join Riot again! Being a Senior Manager of Game Design on an R&D project at Riot Games was a dream come true. I met so many wonderful folks- from my reports, to my peers, to my leaders. I hope to carry those connections with me no matter where we all go. One of my proudest accomplishments during my previous tenure was mentoring and assisting two engineers on their (successful) quests to transition into the field of game design- little is so meaningful to me as helping someone accomplish a goal of theirs, and if it happens to coincide with exploring the wonderful field of game design then so much the better. Riot has an incredible amount of support and continuing education for managers; I learned so much and have so many more tools for helping people be their best selves at work than I ever had before, as well as learning some fantastic ways of looking at the work of design in a more holistic context. The course I took in last November- Customer Centric Product Strategy- was particularly enlightening, and has given me a vocabulary that will be useful no matter where my path takes me. I’ve been on a short hiatus for the last two months- very stressful for the first few weeks, and then, with a new role signed, much more relaxing for the last three. Tomorrow, on the four year anniversary of joining Riot, I join them again- on a new R&D project and in a new role that calls back to a lot of things I’ve done prior in my career… and outside of it! New challenges, new wonderful peers, and new opportunities to increase my knowledge and mastery of game design, and bend it to the purpose of bringing delight and joy to (fingers crossed) millions of players across the world. To say I’m excited to begin is an understatement! Or, as the objectively best champion in League of Legends (Teemo) would say: “Armed and ready!”
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Tolga Tekin liked thisTolga Tekin liked thisToday I discovered that if you give AI a single piece of bad information in the prompt, it might fight you over that and not do any of the prompt. If you correct your mistake and continue, your result will be poor quality. Instead if you reprompt from scratch with no mistake, things are a lot better. Context management applies to more than just token usage.
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Tolga Tekin liked thisTolga Tekin liked thisIf you are a software engineer with networking experience, our team is hiring. :) https://lnkd.in/gJidXDwK
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Tolga Tekin reacted on thisTolga Tekin reacted on thiscalling all audio programmers! come and work on an extremely cool R&D project at Riot https://lnkd.in/gPdYwJPJSenior Software Engineer, Audio - Unpublished R&D ProductSenior Software Engineer, Audio - Unpublished R&D Product
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Tolga Tekin reacted on thisTolga Tekin reacted on thisAfter 14 years, my time at Riot Games has come to an end with the recent wave of layoffs in the past weeks.. Riot was my first and only job, I joined as one of the first people through the doors of the Turkish office, with nothing but a lot of passion for games and the communities that form around them. My career took me through many parts of publishing: standing up local esports and amateur scenes, all things community, international operations and R&D publishing operations. All roles that were very different on paper but always came back to the same thing for me: being close to players and making sure their voices were heard and acted upon. Seeing the impact I made on at least two generation of gamers in the region was quite emotional for me. The outpouring of love and support to the news on socials was crazy.. I'm proud to be the person players think of when they think Riot and that they feel like they can come to me with any random thing even if it's not game related because they know they would be heard and have someone who would simply try for them. That trust was never given but it was built over years of honest, transparent, consistent communication and genuinely caring about the community I served. Losing the role doesn't seem to have changed that, as I'm still getting spammed by requests lol, and I don't take it lightly. It's now time to chase after the next opportunity. I'm looking for a company that puts real weight behind player trust and community, where that philosophy shapes decisions from the inside out. Passion is what drives me, and I need to be somewhere it's shared. If that sounds like your team, or you know someone building something like that, please hit me up!
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Tolga Tekin reacted on thisTolga Tekin reacted on thisEarlier at GDC, a few of you mentioned that my appearance had changed. That change was intentional. Over the last six months, I’ve been running a personal experiment and applied the same continuous improvement (kaizen) principle we use in product development to my own transformation. I wrote about how that worked in practice so far here: https://lnkd.in/gZRUdKCF A lot of this thinking goes back to my time at Riot Games, where we practiced kaizen in depth on LoL's personalization team. I also want to call out Theron James as one of the people who shaped how I think about continuous improvement well beyond software product. Some lessons clearly stick, Theron:)
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Today, a lot of folks at Microsoft are going to find out that they're losing their jobs. For those of you going through it, I'd like to offer a little help here. While I can't say I know exactly what you're going through, I can tell you I've been through layoffs several times and it never gets better - but there are things you can do immediately to get yourself through it: 🗃 - Paperwork! First off, if at all possible have a lawyer review any paperwork you receive, especially severance. Additionally, file for unemployment. Most states require a week or two for processing, so the sooner you get filed the better. Depending on your severance and location, you likely won't be receiving any payments soon, but get it filed anyway. Get it bookmarked and put a reminder on your calendar to refile each Monday moving forward. 📜 - Time to update that resume/portfolio/LinkedIn. Without going too deep in the weeds, remember that these documents are intended as introductions to prospective employers - make it easy for THEM to read it and get the information they need first. Replace objective statements with professional summaries (a quick elevator pitch of who you are, what you do, and what your biggest accomplishments have been - be specific, use numbers). 🧡 - Join supportive groups. Alumni groups, Discords, Slacks, whatever. I help run the Game Industry Coffee Chat (discord.gg/gicc) if you'd like to see what we're about. You should also go to Amir Satvat's community resources page (amirsatvat.com). Bottom line is that you do not have to go through this alone. A lot of experienced devs are putting in the work to help you get through this. 🔗 - Make a post here on LinkedIn explaining your layoff. Skip right to the point: you're on the market, this is what jobs you are explicitly targeting (don't shotgun, focus), and here are your best skills, qualities, and accomplishments. When a potential hiring manager or recruiter is scouring the now THOUSANDS of similar "I was just impacted by the recent..." posts, don't make them go try to figure out if you'd be a good fit for a role that's either open now or potentially coming soon. Be your own billboard. 📅 - Get settled in for a haul. Expect a 6-8 month job search if you have experience. Get your budget set up for this. Yeah, I get it - this part isn't fun at all, but your job right now is to find a job and that means putting yourself into the best position you can be in to look from whatever position of strength you can. It also means looking for bridge roles to tide you over for now or to look outside of the industry for now. 2025 isn't going to let up soon. Be ready to meet that reality now, instead of months from now. 🩺 - Look to your health needs, particularly in the US your medical insurance is wrapped up in your employment. FSAs go away -spend them! Get appts scheduled NOW! Fill prescriptions ahead of time NOW! #WeGotYou #GameIndustry #Layoffs #Xbox
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Julien Proux
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Alexandra Takei
Medal • 5K followers
A new breed of micro-indie publisher focused on sub $200K budget games is emerging. Low dev cost regions, shipping products fast, and building a repeatable machine for discovery in the attention war. When I asked Kirill Akimkin how PC games get discovered, he said, "It's half short-form content and the other half is from friends. But from friends means someone shared the video with them. So short form is the cheat code." Their strategy is working so far. Totally Secure Airport sits at 260K wishlists and counting, and got 75K wishlists in one day due to a single viral video. Final Sentence is sitting at 290K, and Deadhikers is at 130K as of this past weekend. Polden Publishing's portfolio to date includes: Fish Hunters, Football Story, Bus Flipper Simulator, Train Valley Origins, and the hotly anticipated titles of Meowgik and the titles mentioned above. In 2025, they shipped 7 games, and in 2026, they have aspirations to ship 20. 🔊We Discuss: - Where do Polden's developers come from, and are there challenges in speed and quality when trying to push so many games out the gate? - What does the relationship between the publisher and developer look like, and from the pipeline perspective, what is Polden looking for when it comes to game pitches? - The uncanny emphasis on user testing. If the game doesn't hit the scores across median play time on Steam or surveys, it gets cut. - Recipes for discovery, both outside of Steam and playing to their strengths on the Steam algorithm. - Why they'd made choices on delaying games and lessons learned on games that did not meet their expectations. ‼️And then we chat about all the existential stuff. - What happens if Steam changes the algorithm? - Do Steam Next Fests even matter? - In low-budget titles like this, do players still care about AI usage? - What is changing about the tastes of the modern gamer? - Where do we think discovery truly occurs right now? 🖥️ If you are shipping a game on Steam, this is a definite must-listen. Listen to Naavik's channels on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube below in the comments. #gaming #indie #discovery
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Frederico Machado de Campos
YAGER • 31K followers
Last year I was part of a panel and I must say I remain optimistic towards the potential of the gaming industry. The talent in our industry is unique and so passionate - and that is where I believe the power of change lies. https://lnkd.in/dkRGGaga
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Vasil T.
Coherent Labs • 2K followers
This isn't the matrix, it's Steam. Every single AppID since the beginning of time. In total, 25 years worth of PC games coming in at 253,105 unique entries to date. What's even more fascinating is being able to see which were the first ever games available, at the inception point of one of gaming's biggest platforms.
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Ilya Mezerovsky
monday.com • 920 followers
Everyone's arguing about whether DLSS 5 will "YASAFFAY" game characters and ruin artistic vision. Late take, but: this is the wrong conversation. Remember when ray tracing first showed up? Games that shipped without it got RTX patches later. People panicked about "unintended lighting" breaking the developer's vision. Turned out fine. Devs who cared about lighting already knew what pipeline they were targeting. Everyone else got a nice optional upgrade. DLSS 5 is the same pattern. It's an optional feature in a mature upscaler stack. Game developers aren't accidentally going to lose control of their art direction because Nvidia ships a better reconstruction model. They know what tech their game supports. They build around it. But here's what's actually wild about DLSS 5 that nobody seems to be talking about. The img2img consistency. Frame to frame coherence at that level of reconstruction is genuinely hard. Anyone who's tried to get stable diffusion to produce two consistent frames in a row knows the pain. Nvidia apparently just... solved a huge chunk of that? At real time performance? That's the story. Not "will my characters look weird." The fact that we now have inference based image reconstruction that holds together across motion, camera cuts, and varying scene complexity. At playable framerates. The character smoothing discourse feels like complaining about JPEG artifacts on the Hubble telescope.
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Harvey Newman
REKiNDLED Studios • 10K followers
Some of the numbers in this year's GDC State of the Industry report really hit me hard. 28% of all respondents have been laid off in the last two years. 33% in the US. Two thirds of them came from AAA studios. And half of those happened in just the last 12 months. When I see numbers like that, I don't just see numbers. I see mortgages. I see families. I see people who moved across the country for a dream job and now have to move back. A few things I think we need to talk about after sitting with this for a few hours: AAA is still amazing and it will always be amazing. But I don't think it should be the only goal anymore. Funny enough, quite a few of the younger animators I'm meeting through REKiNDLED Studios , our codev studio, actually don't want to work at AAA. They want flexibility. Multiple projects. A safety net if one project blows up. The AI fear is much much bigger than the reality. 81% of devs use AI for research and brainstorming. Only 19% for asset generation. Students are the ones I worry about most. 74% feel their future in this industry is at risk. Senior level animators are taking mid level jobs just to pay the rent, which means juniors are competing against people with 10x their experience for the same seats. The path is harder but It is not closed. The opportunities are still out there for anybody willing to specialise, ship something, and put their work in front of the world. I broke the whole report down on YouTube with my honest take after 20 plus years in this industry. Link in the comments. If you got laid off recently or can relate with this drop a line below.
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Amir Satvat
Tencent Games • 150K followers
We Need To Be Careful With Layoff Numbers Right Now A widely shared GDC survey stat today, echoed by major press as a larger scale finding, suggested that one third of those surveyed, working in games in the United States, were laid off over the past two years. You all know I, of all people on planet earth, would never downplay the human cost behind games layoffs. Every job lost is a person, a family, and a life disrupted. But there is a very large gap between that figure and what I am seeing in the most comprehensive tracked datasets available, and I think that deserves a closer look. Based on the layoff tracking I maintain by region, North America saw 11,723 games layoffs two years ago and 5,638 last year. That is 17,361 total layoffs across two years. Now we have to pair that with workforce size. The most rigorous attempt I have seen to measure the games workforce comes from Game Industry Coffee Chat, which estimates a median North America games workforce of about 230,000 people: https://lnkd.in/eb_kK9BV Even if we assume every one of those 17,361 layoffs impacted a completely different person, which is unlikely since some individuals were laid off more than once, that equals roughly 8 percent of the workforce over two years. That is still deeply serious. But it is very different from one third. For one third of the workforce to have been laid off in the United States over the past two years, we would be talking about roughly 66,000 people, not 17,361. That is a difference of nearly 49,000 roles. And even if we narrow from North America to the United States only, where GICC estimates about 200,000 games workers, the percentage still lands in the same range, about 8 percent, nowhere near a third. So how do numbers get that far apart? Survey data around layoffs can skew high for many reasons. People who were directly impacted are far more likely to respond. Surveys often circulate most heavily in communities already affected. Definitions of “games industry” vary widely between respondents. Some surveys are global but get interpreted as U.S. only. Others may include contract endings, short term roles, or adjacent tech roles differently. Without tight sampling controls, surveys can end up reflecting who feels the pain most strongly rather than the full workforce picture. None of this makes the last two years any less painful. They have been among the hardest periods our industry has faced. But if we want to advocate effectively for workers, studios, and long term stability, our numbers have to be as rigorous as our empathy. Clear data helps us understand the true scale of the challenge and push for solutions that actually match reality. This is why I have always relied on direct measurement of all figures rather than anything polling or survey related, although those can also be used to calibrate if and when they align with hard data.
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Max Lei
COMMA 49 • 783 followers
A lot of indie devs these days choose to download models and run them locally. But personally, I still recommend running them with an Agent. After all, the array performance, time cost, and online reference libraries are on a totally different level. Your home bandwidth and GPU are limited resources, not to mention the electricity bill just keeps shooting up. Tools should be used in whatever way feels most comfortable.
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Mark Ross
Proud to be a part of the… • 3K followers
Slot Player Life Official Press Release 3/3/2026 After many months of operating in stealth mode, we are officially pleased to announce our presence to the world. We have the world's FIRST digital lifestyle platform for slot machine players. Duane R. Chapman Andy Shaw Mike Leuchtenberg Saul Ramirez Islas Slot Player Life #slotplayerlife #casino #slotmachine #gambling
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Herbert Marselas
AMD • 2K followers
(post 1/ 2) I asked Claude: As an Xbox game developer, and as an Xbox game publisher, I'm concerned by what I'm seeing and reading about Xbox's future. What should I do? I understand your concerns - there's been significant turbulence in the Xbox ecosystem recently that would understandably worry any developer working in that space. The immediate reality is that Microsoft announced major layoffs across the Xbox division in July 2025, with reports suggesting hundreds to potentially thousands of jobs affected. The Initiative studio was shut down entirely, leading to the cancellation of Perfect Dark Everything You Need to Know About Xbox Layoffs, Studio Closures, and Canceled Games in 2025 - Outsider Gaming and multiple other games have been canceled and studios closed . At least 13 game development studios were impacted Here's a List of Everyone Affected by Xbox's Massive Layoffs in this latest round. Immediate actions: Network aggressively within the industry right now. Many talented developers are suddenly available, but so is competition for open positions. Update your portfolio and resume immediately. Highlight your Xbox-specific experience, but also demonstrate versatility across platforms. Consider contract or freelance work as a bridge while the market stabilizes. Strategic positioning: While Xbox hardware and traditional console development face uncertainty, Microsoft is moving toward a unified Windows-based gaming ecosystem The Next-Gen Xbox is entering its final form, and it could change gaming as we know it that could create new opportunities. Xbox is emphasizing AI integration and "gaming anywhere" initiatives Xbox at GDC 2025: Discover the Next Era of Gaming Anywhere , which might align with your skills. Game Pass remains a focus despite the upheaval, so understanding subscription-based game design could be valuable. Diversification: Start building relationships with other publishers and platforms now, before you need them. Consider how your Xbox development skills translate to PC, mobile, or other console platforms. Look into emerging areas like cloud gaming or cross-platform development. The gaming industry is cyclical, and while this is clearly a difficult period for Xbox developers, your experience still has value. The key is positioning yourself for whatever comes next rather than waiting to see how the current situation resolves.
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Marc Mencher
GameRecruiter.com • 21K followers
The entry-level hiring freeze is creating a senior-level burnout. ⚠️ When studios stop bringing in junior talent, the "apprenticeship model" breaks. The result? Your most expensive, experienced developers are spending 40% of their time doing mid-level tasks. This bottleneck is the silent killer of AAA projects. At Game Recruiter, we help leadership teams identify where they are over-leveraging their seniors and how to strategically hire the "Just-In-Time" talent needed to clear the path. It’s about more than just filling a seat; it’s about restoring your team’s focus. Stop making your leads wear ten hats. Let’s find the right talent to take some off. #GameDev #DeveloperBurnout #TeamLeadership #RecruitmentStrategy #GameRecruiter #SeniorDevelopers #GamingNews
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Marc Mencher
GameRecruiter.com • 21K followers
85% of game studios have dropped degree requirements. So, why is the talent gap still growing? The truth is, removing the degree barrier was only half the battle. Now, the challenge isn't finding people with certificates: it’s finding people with the actual "surgical" skills needed to ship a hit game. The "Degree Requirement Myth" is the idea that a diploma (or lack thereof) tells you everything you need to know. In reality, the vetting process has never been more critical. Without a deep, technical understanding of game development, it’s easy to hire someone who looks great on paper but can't handle the pressure of a live environment. At Game Recruiter, our leadership didn't just start in HR. We were in the trenches: making, developing, and launching games. We don’t just look at resumes; we vet for the specific, critical skills that make or break a project. If you're tired of the talent gap and need a surgical hire who actually knows their way around a build, let’s talk. #GameDev #GamingIndustry #Hiring #GameRecruiter
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