Inflated Salaries and Remote Work: Developer Names Main Reasons for Studio Layoffs and Game Delays
John Gibson, founder and owner of Templar Media publishing house, as well as former co-founder and CEO of Tripwire Interactive, shared his perspective on the crisis in the gaming industry, which he attributes to the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to Gibson, the pandemic opened the door for a massive shift to remote work, which he believes has seriously reduced the efficiency and creativity of developers.
Working from home seems convenient, but people often become less productive and less creative. The coolest ideas in the projects I've worked on were born from random encounters in the hallway: two people with different parts of the same idea just talked and created a whole concept.
Gibson also explained the wave of mass layoffs by inflated salaries during the pandemic boom. Companies that made huge profits offered developers unrealistic sums — according to him, an engineer could receive a million dollars for the first year of work. This model proved unsustainable, which led to a sharp market correction and large-scale reductions.
