Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Video game the industry has been in a troubled spot for the past year, with studio closures and job security at the forefront of developers’ concerns. Increase in layoffs With seemingly no end in sight, it paints a bleak picture for developers when companies are busy pumping money AI initiatives.
According to a new report from Game Developers Conference organizers, 52 percent of developers surveyed said they work for companies that use these apps. generative AI to their games. Nearly half of the 3,000 people surveyed said they were worried about the technology’s impact on industry, and a growing number felt negative about AI in general. The State of the Games Industry report, released Tuesday, is one of a series of surveys conducted annually by GDC organizers ahead of the annual conference. This year’s event will take place in March in San Francisco.
The 2025 GDC report comes after a tumultuous few years in the industry. Even like games Astro Bot, Helldivers 2 and Balatro found success, studios Like Microsoft and there’s Sony cut the staff and canceled games. Amidst a mix of cultural and economic factors affecting the industry, developers are still dealing with a company enthusiasm for technology that some find ethically troubling.
“I have a PhD in AI, I’ve worked on developing some of the algorithms used by generative AI,” wrote one developer. “I deeply regret how naively I presented my allocations.”
About 30 percent of developers surveyed said they have a negative view of AI, up from 18 percent last year; only 13 percent believed AI had a positive impact on games, up from 21 percent in 2024. they wrote in the answer.
There is AI for developers potential Respondents said it would help with several tasks, including coding, concept art and creating 3D models, but when asked what uses they see for AI in the industry, “the most common answer was ‘no,'” GDC organizers wrote.
In theory, generative AI could help ease some developers’ workloads. This is not happening. Instead, developers are reportedly working longer hours than they have in years. Thirteen percent of respondents reported putting in more than 51 hours of work weeks last year, up from 8 percent of respondents. While those extra hours could be attributed to additional work being done to make up for the co-workers lost in the massive industry-wide layoffs in 2024, many have raised concerns that artificial intelligence is also a factor. One employee wrote: “We need to use generative AI to help people get faster at their jobs, not lose them.”
layoffs, industry story for the past few years, still creates a big problem. “Survive to 25,” mantra for struggling developers, hardly helped those who lost their jobs. One in 10 developers had been laid off in the past year, according to the survey. There was also an increase in “no” responses: “The question doesn’t apply to them because they’ve already been laid off or otherwise unemployed. In other words, it was not a concern now, because it had happened to them in a sense.”
