If you only looked at revenue, 2026 would look like the best year the games industry has ever had. If you only looked at headcount, it would look like a collapse. Both readings are correct, and understanding why is the key to understanding where the industry actually is right now.

The revenue side

The global video game industry generated about $195.6 billion in content revenue in 2025 — its highest annual total on record. The business, in aggregate, has never made more money.

The jobs side

At the same time, more than 44,000 game development jobs have been cut since 2022, and that pace hasn’t slowed — an estimated 8,000 to 12,000 more jobs were cut globally in just the first half of 2026. Survey data from the Game Developers Conference found that one in three US developers had been laid off within the previous two years. The people making the games have, by their own account, never felt less secure in their jobs.

Why both things are true

The revenue isn’t evenly spread — it’s concentrating. A shrinking number of evergreen franchises and major storefronts account for a growing share of total industry revenue, while the long tail of new IP and support work is getting squeezed out. That concentration is also what’s fueling consolidation: the platforms and publishers best positioned to already own those evergreen franchises are the ones acquiring the rest of the market, including several mid-tier studios.

In short — the industry isn’t shrinking. It’s consolidating around fewer, bigger bets, and cutting the workforce that doesn’t map directly onto those bets.

Workers are organizing in response

This isn’t happening quietly. In March 2025, developers across the US and Canada launched United Videogame Workers-CWA Local 9433, an industry-wide direct-join union open to workers regardless of studio. And it’s not just North America — staff at Ubisoft Barcelona walked off the job on June 30, 2026, opening a three-week strike that ran through July 16.

Expect more of this, not less. When record revenue and record layoffs coexist in the same industry for multiple years running, “we can’t afford to keep you” becomes a much harder sell — and workers are increasingly organized enough to say so.

---

Curious where some of that concentrated revenue is actually going? GTA 6’s massive, twice-delayed launch is one of the clearest examples of the industry betting everything on its biggest names. Meanwhile, AI adoption is running at almost the same rate as industry skepticism about it — a tension that’s very much tied to this same story.