
GDC’s annual survey of the devs in the game industry is out today, with data reflecting polling and comments from over 3000 game developers.
“The analysis of the State of the Games Industry Survey results revealed that developers continue to feel both direct and indirect impacts from ongoing industry-wide layoffs, they also believe that generative artificial intelligence (AI) is having a negative impact on game development,” the organization reports. “The survey results also marked that developers are increasingly focusing development on the PC platform, and survey respondents have begun to lose interest in developing live-service titles, the responses indicate that self-funding has been the primary way for developers to back their games, and many more insights directly from the developer community.”
Among the highlights:
- One in 10 game developers surveyed were laid off in the past year – actually, 11% – while 41% reported being affected by layoffs, 6% more than in 2024.
- Those who reported layoffs mentioned COVID-era over-expansion, restructing, declining revenue, market trends, greed, overhiring, rising production costs, mismanagement, and unrealistic expectations as reasons.
- The industry is still heavily white and male, though more women have entered the space in the last five years.
- People over 45 make up only 21% of respondents and people with more than 15 years of experience only 22%. (Hey, braindrain, cool cool cool.)
- While the survey suggests 3% growth in game narrative jobs over the last year, more game narrative devs were affected by layoffs. (We’re assuming game narrative devs as well as indie devs are slightly overrepresented in the survey.)
- More studios than ever are apparently utilizing gen AI tools even as interest has fallen off. It looks as if gen AI is chiefly being used by business, production, and marketing folks, however – not so much on the design end.
- Game dev opinions on tech have continued to fall; more than twice as many game devs believe gen AI has a negative effect on the games industry in 2025 than in 2024, chiefly because of quality and ethical concerns.
- PC continues to be the dominant platform, with over 80% of respondents saying their current project is destined for PC.
- A third of AAA studio respondents said they worked on a live service game; the segment is seen as relatively stable, barring issues with predatory business practices, burnout, and market saturation.
- You wouldn’t know it from all the transmedia synergy we get, but in-game crossover promotion is the least popular marketing strategy.
- 71% of respondents believe their company’s DEI and accessibility efforts have been successful, even if only slightly.
- And of course, the survey touches on the current funding problem in the industry, with over half of respondents saying they’re self-funding (again, though, indies appear to be overrepresented here).
It’s worth a flip-through if you’re curious to see some hard numbers on what game devs actually think when they aren’t muzzled by PR. I mean, this person speaks for all of us.