Former Sony CEO says laid-off developers can 'go to a beach for a whole year'. Don't blame greedy executives: 'Things just jump out at you and you deal them just like in any game. So get over it!'

It's been a terrible couple of years for those in the games industry. As studios of all sizes make cut after cutting, developers find themselves increasingly at the mercy of the knife. They hear the usual blather from studios about streamlining, resets, and delivering value to shareholders. In the first quarter of this year, over 16,000 developers lost their jobs. This number has only increased as companies such as Bungie, Rocksteady and many others have laid off hundreds.

You don't need to worry because "all those now-unemployed devs can simply find a cheap place and go to the beaches for a whole year". Chris Deering is the former president of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, and he recently appeared on an episode My Perfect Console. Deering responded that the state of the gaming industry is "painful" when asked about his opinion. I don't believe it's greed. I think there was an over-exuberance fueled and stoked by the pandemic's knock-on effects and the supply-chain restrictions that followed."

Deering, 79, was president of SCEE between 1995 and 2005. He looked at the state of the industry from the perspective of his experience. "I think it's probably painful for the managers," he said, but he does not believe that devs who are laid off will be condemned to a "lifetime of poverty or limitations."

Deering continued, "It is still the place where the action is and it's the pandemic. But now you have to figure out a way to get through it. Drive an Uber, find a cheap apartment, and go to a beach for a whole year. Keep up with the news, because it will be much harder once you leave the train.

This is the most tone-deaf and buckwild thing I've heard a C-suite official say. And it was only a couple of months ago that I was writing about EA's CEO imagining a future in which billions were using AI to create EA's video games.

To be incredibly fair, Deering's assessment of the reasons for the industry downturn wasn't incorrect. It's true that many entertainment companies, and games companies in particular, were zooted by the skyrocketing demand experienced during the Covid locksdowns. They went on hiring binges as a result. We've all been suffering from the ugly hangover after we were allowed to leave home.

The people who are paying the price for that hangover, however, are not, in general, those who hired up half of the Earth on the basis of a disastrously short-term mindset. The Chris Deerings are not clearing out their desks or losing their salaries. It's animators and artists who are responsible for assembling video games.

They are often workers who have already moved across the country, taken their kids out of school and rearranged their entire life to be told - a year or two after - that they are no longer required because the company must deliver shareholder value through streamlining its operations. These people can't wait around - whether at the beach or driving Uber - until the games industry decides to hire them again in a few more years. To suggest that they can is to show a level blindness that only the executive class can achieve.

Heck, some bosses even understand that. Swen Vincke, Larian's CEO, slammed the corporate "greed," which has devastated developers at this year’s GDC Awards. Tarn Adams, Larian's publishing manager and Dwarf Fortress creator, said the same thing: "They're all horrible and I think that they're bad."

Deering couldn't sound more different. "I'm optimistic for people who have recently been laid off. These things do recover - sometimes faster than you think when everything is precarious," Deering said on the podcast. "I presume that people were paid a decent severance, and that by the time it runs out, that's just life."

Deering believes that developers would be better off worrying about the influx of "cheap or AI-assisted hours of programming from poorer countries", rather than the bloody swathes of layoffs that are tearing the industry apart. This is a familiar story, isn't? The obscenely rich telling the obscenely poor that they should worry more about foreigners and robots. The billions in the bank of their bosses.

"What's exciting about this industry," says Deering "is that you never have a chance to feel depressed." You have to deal with things as if they were a game. So get over it!"