On the ground at GDC: how are devs responding to industry calamity?

Image via GDC Festival of Gaming

This year’s GDC, marketed as a “Festival of Gaming” as much as a buttoned-up professional conference, once again brought thousands of game developers to the Bay Area. Business cards were exchanged and drinks were shared, but the mood was not entirely celebratory. In an industry rocked by layoffs, anxiety lurked beneath the surface as professionals asked: what the hell comes next? And if this really is a festival, what are we celebrating? 

Time and time again, as I walked the floor and talked to strangers and friends, the word that came up was “uncertainty.”

There is uncertainty about the stability of large studios, uncertainty that releasing even a quality product is enough to keep your job, uncertainty about the encroachment of generative AI and other labor-threatening technologies, and most of all an uncertainty about what it even means to be successful as a game developer anymore. 

No one I spoke to said that they were doing okay. The industry was “on fire” and on the edge of collapse according to everyone I spoke with. Most conceptions of “what comes next?” were focused on a smaller game industry, serving more specific audiences. 

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The old model is broken forever. The new normal is lean, subsisting. That’s the future according to developers attending this year’s show. 

How do you survive turbulent times?

A study carried out by the conference concluded that over one in four respondents (28 percent) had been laid off in the past two years and half of their employers had conducted layoffs in the last 12 months. The industry is contracting, and while opinions differ on what needs to be done at this moment, there was an overwhelming sense from almost everyone I interviewed that something has irrevocably broken.  

“I’m trying to gaslight myself into being positive,” Moe Aguilar told me. Aguilar is a Mexican student currently working towards a graduate degree from Carnegie Mellon who has attended multiple GDCs. “It felt like last year, people were more hopeful; this year the talks I’ve not been able to enter are about entrepreneurship, Kickstarters, and how to secure funding.” 

There was a drive from attendees to visit business-focused talks as students and independent creators alike sought solutions to money woes. 

Many were eager for any insight on ways to save money and survive in the industry. Among the most talked about session was “Game Funding: Lessons From Outersloth,” which included a look at the contracts for Innersloth’s investment fund; the act of transparency was meant to encourage other developers to lower the curtain and share details about funding and wider studio financials.  

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The question of funding and where to find it arises in the middle of an ongoing shift from investors away from games specific technologies to wider initiatives. 

As developers scramble to find ways to cover their costs, the issue isn’t that there’s no money to go around; the issue is that the money exists and is simply flowing in the wrong direction. The novelty of video games has worn off for the moneymen even if their bank accounts aren’t looking any less flush. 

“It doesn’t feel like there’s money for people making interesting things,” game designer and musician Liz Ryerson told me during a brief chat. “There is a lot of money to go around for people making the world worse.” 

Ryerson curates the Experimental Game Showcase at GDC, a session of microtalks about experimental games and the process of designing them. Ryerson’s summation of the industry moment was harsh but comes with an understanding that many developers did not choose for this kind of contraction and instability to occur. 

It seemed universally agreed upon by everyone I met that the people making those decisions have no damn clue what they are doing. Trust in ownership and management is plummeting. 

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The harshest words came from two narrative professionals, “Henry” and “Delilah” with experience on independent and triple-A games (who requested anonymity to speak freely for fear of retaliation). They held back very few punches regarding decision-makers. 

“Their track record is dogshit,” Delilah told me. “Multiple times over the years in the industry I was told that all games will be played on the cloud and that didn’t happen. I was told that the metaverse would be a thing. NFTs and crypto didn’t happen the way they said.” 

“I don’t think this is unique to the games industry,” Henry told me candidly. “I think what we’re seeing right now is a more broad contraction specifically in Western tech resources. Which I think is unfortunately not something the industry can solve for itself.” 

“I’m armoring up,” he added when I asked how he’s coping with current events. “…If I’m gonna be honest, I am not sure the games industry can fix this.” 

“I’m constantly reminding myself of the dozens of people I know who are in the same position as me,” Delilah confided at the end of our conversation. “Which helps to dull the sting, y’know?” 

Be it the game industry or anywhere else, the numbers when it comes to job security and resources in the United States. As of February 2026, the unemployment rate has increased to 4.4 percent with up to 7.57 million people out of work. The cost of living has increased 2.4 percent in the last year, a number which does not count any new pressures arising from President Trump’s decision to engage in a war with Iran. There are fewer jobs, everything is pricier.  

And if you ask the investor class what the cure to all our woes are, in games or otherwise, the answer is “AI, baby!”

The crowd’s consensus: workers matter more than technology 

While many people were looking for solutions to their ongoing problems, many of the remedies being sold to developers, especially AI, didn’t seem to offer what developers wanted. The Expo Hall was full of stages with lively discussions and a pavilion of international developers, and many booths were focused on AI and how to integrate it into your games.  

Roughly 45 partners listed on the GDC website either mention AI technologies in their biographies or in the name of their companies while others may not have explicitly mentioned it but featured demos at their booths. One demonstration at a Google booth used the company’s Vertex AI platform to populate a small pixel town with reactive inhabitants who could respond to whatever the player said. 

This was mostly met with ridicule on social media. 

Ambivalence to the tech’s usefulness was commonly held among those I spoke to even if opinions differ somewhat on whether or not AI has a place in development. For some, they represent a clear moral line. Others approached the matter from a somewhat less black and white perspective. All agree that the tools that exist now are not particularly useful. 

“I’m no Luddite,” I was told during my meeting with Josiah Clark at the Communications Workers of America Union (CWA) booth in the Expo Hall. Clark is a narrative designer at Blizzard Entertainment who is also a World of Warcraft Gamemakers Guild member.  

“I think AI will maybe be a good thing eventually but where it is right now that’s not the case,” he outlined succinctly. His issue is what AI is being used for. “It should handle the things we don’t want to do. The fact that it’s handling the things that people really want to do seems confusing.” 

“Corporations obviously want to make the most amount of profits,” Clark said. “What’s the most malleable thing to adjust for cost? That usually is labor!”

Unions were at least one of the common remedies suggested for the ailing game industry as I spoke with attendees. The GDC survey found that 82 percent of workers favored unionization. That said, it is a solution for a specific kind of studio and worker. For some of the people I spoke to, while they favored unionization, they stressed a need to think smaller and more locally. 

“The only problem is that the industry is so varied,” Adanna Nedd, a narrative designer and games researcher told me. “My biggest worry is that as unionization grows, given how big the industry is and for people not based in the US, are they going to be unintentionally excluded?” 

Nedd stressed a need to build out alternative regions spaces and a willingness to take risks on projects. More games, more rough edges, more experiences that show the people behind the code. These are the things that will draw in players and help build sustainability. 

It’s advice echoed by Liz Ryerson from our earlier conversation. “Whenever [the game industry] falls apart, you want that stuff right there,” she told me. Because that’s gonna be there when the ashes [are all that’s left] of all this.” 

A successful future as a gamer maker requires preparation now and a willingness to embrace a leaner, more personal existence. The end is coming and preppers will do better than most.

Beyond that? The main advice I heard was to adjust our perspectives and approaches both when it came to defining success and finding it. The most vociferous individual I spoke to all week was Brandon Sheffield, creative director of Necrosoft Games. Sheffield had an easy-going, Zen-like affect in our conversation even as his advice was precision targeted on solutions. 

“The only thing you can rely on is meeting people where they are and identifying what people are missing,” Sheffield told me during a well-shaded chat in Yerba Buena Gardens. He believes that one pathway to success is to aim for very specific audiences regardless of the size. Figure out what people are craving in specific communities and then make a solid version of that thing. 

“Part of why Demonschool, our game that just came out, did as well as it did is that a lot of queer people like Persona games and a lot of them deal very poorly with queer issues,” Sheffield reasoned. ‘so there was an audience we knew that it would resonate with.” 

This more specific, targeted approach was one of Sheffield’s most emphatic pieces of advice during our chat. While he says that some investors are finally seeing that money needs to flow again to things other than boondoggle live service gambles, it’s a practical approach towards building an audience that will allow games to break through in an over-saturated market.  

What else will it take? Like it or not, a bit of luck but also a fundamental change in our understanding of what it actually means to be successful in such a troubled industry.

Sheffield outlined the future he imagined and compared it with the future he’s found himself in. “I thought by age 50—I’m not there yet—I’d have a comfortable income and people might be coming to me for pitches [I could fund] or whatever but instead I’m still working.” 

It’s not what he imagined but given the circumstances, it might be the best possible scenario. 

“Maybe what success is now,” he speculated. “Maybe success is ‘I’m still here and able to struggle.’ Maybe the new definition of success is [that] you’re not underwater.”

Game Developer and GDC are sibling organizations under Informa Festivals.