đȘ Game Budgets, AI Promises, and Layoffs Nobody Is Calling a Strategy Anymore
Hello there studio builders, burned producers, exhausted creatives, and people whoâve learned to read press releases like weather warnings.
Todayâs news cycle isnât loud. Thereâs no single implosion dominating the feed. Instead, itâs a collection of signals that line up a little too cleanly. Who gets to take risks, who gets cut, and who gets told to âadaptâ again, all while being reassured that everything is fine.
Letâs unpack whatâs actually happening.
Big Games, Small Games, and the Fantasy of One Right Budget
Josef Fares made a point that should not be controversial, but somehow still is. You canât make GTA for ten million dollars. You also canât pretend that the success of one mid-budget game suddenly replaces the need for AAA production.
Clair Obscur Expedition 33 reportedly shipped on a budget closer to ten million dollars and went on to achieve strong sales, critical acclaim, and awards momentum. That success matters. But Faresâ warning was about what happens next. Publishers have a habit of turning exceptions into expectations.
The industry has lived through this cycle repeatedly. One breakout hit convinces decision-makers theyâve discovered a formula. Budgets are cut. Risk is redefined as imitation. A year later, nobody remembers why the original worked in the first place.
Fares argues that scale diversity is structural, not optional. AAA blockbusters, AA experiments, and indie projects each serve different creative and commercial purposes. Removing one tier because another had a good year doesnât make the ecosystem healthier. It makes it brittle.
đŠ Kiki: Iâve sat through enough greenlight meetings to know exactly how this goes. Someone points at a success and suddenly every pitch is expected to replicate it with fewer people, less time, and a cleaner spreadsheet. Expedition 33 worked because it committed to its identity, not because it hit some magical budget number. Big games still need big money sometimes, and pretending otherwise just pushes everyone toward safe, forgettable design.
đȘ Chip slowly erases a whiteboard full of shrinking budget estimates.
AI as a Competitive Necessity, According to Executives
SHIFTUPâs CEO framed AI adoption as a matter of national competitiveness. Studios in countries like South Korea cannot match the sheer manpower of Chinese or US studios, where teams can reach into the thousands. In that framing, AI becomes a force multiplier. One trained developer doing the work of many.
The argument is pragmatic, even logical, on paper. AI promises efficiency, faster iteration, and the idea that developers become more valuable by mastering new tools rather than being replaced by them.
At the same time, industry surveys paint a far more cautious picture. A minority of developers believe generative AI will have a positive impact. Concerns remain around legal risk, creative dilution, and the reality that efficiency gains rarely translate into stability for workers.
đŠ Kiki: I understand why this sounds convincing to executives staring at headcount charts. But the math is never that clean. Saying one person can do the work of a hundred just concentrates pressure, it doesnât remove it. AI is going to get better, way better than people want to admit, and pretending otherwise is naive. The real problem isnât the tools. Itâs leadership acting like tools absolve them from protecting the people using them.
đȘ Chip watches a progress bar fill slowly, then reset.
VR Studios Disappear After the Hype Moves On
Metaâs Reality Labs layoffs wiped out Twisted Pixel Games and SANZARU Games, two studios with long histories that followed the company into VR development. These were not experimental startups chasing a fad. They were established teams building what the platform holder asked them to build.
Twisted Pixel had roots going back twenty years, including work during the Xbox Live Arcade era. Sanzaru carried legacy franchises and found renewed relevance through VR projects like Asgardâs Wrath. Both were acquired during Metaâs aggressive push into immersive tech.
When priorities shifted, the studios didnât slowly wind down. They were simply gone.
đŠ Kiki: This is the part that wears you down. Studios do exactly what theyâre asked to do, align with the platform vision, invest years of their lives, and then vanish when the strategy changes. Nobody suddenly forgot how to make games. The future just stopped being fashionable, and the cost landed exactly where it always does.
đȘ Chip carefully sets a VR headset on a shelf marked âformer priorities.â
Ubisoft Keeps Cutting While Promising Stability
Ubisoft laid off staff at Massive Entertainment – A Ubisoft Studio and Ubisoft Stockholm, even as The Division 3 remains in active development and The Division 2 continues to receive live updates. This followed the closure of Ubisoft Halifax, a mobile-focused studio, days earlier.
Official messaging emphasizes continuity. Long-term direction unchanged. Streamlining operations. Focus on core franchises. Behind that language is a workforce trying to reconcile active production demands with shrinking teams.
These cuts arrive amid deeper structural changes. Tencentâs involvement, the creation of Vantage Studios, and a renewed push to stabilize output after years of uneven releases. The expectation remains the same. Ship hits. Move faster. Miss nothing.
đŠ Kiki: Thereâs a limit to how many times you can tell people the direction hasnât changed while removing the people responsible for executing it. Every layoff leaves behind more work, less trust, and quieter conversations about exit plans. Stability doesnât come from press statements. It comes from teams knowing the ground wonât disappear mid-sprint.
đȘ Chip pins a note to the wall that reads âstill shipping.â
Stay. Keep. Remember.
Stay grounded like teams who understand that budgets donât define creativity, but they do define reality.
Keep questioning efficiency narratives that never seem to protect the people doing the work.
And remember patterns donât announce themselves as crises. They repeat until someone breaks them.
If this one hit close to home, share it with someone whoâs still trying to make sense of where the industry is heading.
đŠ Kiki · đȘ Chip · â Byte · đŠ Leo
