The games industry will never “get back to normal”, lament Tony Hawk devs Iron Galaxy, as they make another round of layoffs

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 developers Iron Galaxy are laying off an unknown number of people, as they struggle to “adapt to the climate” of a videogames industry that is refusing to “get back to normal”. This follows a round of 66 job losses at Iron Galaxy last February, which were described as a “last resort”.

Founded back in 2008, Iron Galaxy are known for supporting development and creating ports of games like Apex Legends and The Last of Us, but they’ve also made or published a few original games, including Videoball (worked on by journo legendaire Tim Rogers) and Divekick. According to their LinkedIn page, they have over 200 employees as of writing, spread across offices in Chicago, Orlando, and Nashville.

“Since we first got started, we have taken on many different forms as a company,” reads a new LinkedIn update. “Throughout these different phases, we have changed our focus, our mission, and our size. We’ve worked with the best creators of interactive entertainment and made some games of our own. Along the way, we’ve seen the industry that we serve expand and contract in surprising ways.

“Ever since 2020, when everything about making video games started to change, people have been waiting for business ‘to get back to normal’,” the post continues. “These are the conversations we’ve had with colleagues and partners on our travels to the places where game creators gather. This year, we’re adopting a new posture to accept these current market conditions as permanent.

“Players consume games in new ways,” it goes on. “Publishers have different criteria for investing in the development of games. This new normal has impacted all our partners. As Iron Galaxy adapts, we must make painful decisions about what we can be as a company. It’s impossible for us to sustain the team size that we’ve carried this past year, even after our downsizing from last year.”

Iron Galaxy don’t go into detail about what they mean by “back to normal”, so let me blearily shovel in some context: they’re probably referring to the gaming boom cultivated by Covid pandemic social distancing provisions, which saw many already-large videogame companies expand dramatically… only to cut jobs, contracts and projects in droves a few years later, after the lifting of quarantine measures.

Over the past few years, the biggest publishers have also sought to offset high blockbuster development costs and keep the gravy train going by investing in magic-bean technologies like NFTs and the metaverse, while funnelling vast sums towards live service games that could become ‘evergreen’ hits. Some of the company heads concerned, like Epic’s Tim Sweeney, have admitted to being unrealistic in their financial projections, though few of them have faced any significant material repercussions.

The latest magic-bean technology is generative AI, which I will concede isn’t as useless as NFTs, but has a bunch of fundamental issues, ranging from sheer cost in terms of hardware through overall quality of output to questions of cultural cannibalism and artistic autonomy. While much hyped, generative AI shows little sign of being the business force multiplier the suits are hoping for, though it’s widely touted as an excuse to, if not actively lay people off, then keep team sizes small. It certainly doesn’t seem to be offering much insulation against recent economic shocks like the US-Iran war, which has driven up fuel prices.

Again, all that’s me extrapolating from the Iron Galaxy post, not a commentary on anything specific at Iron Galaxy. The company’s co-CEO Adam Boyes has taken a cautious view on generative AI in the past, stating in 2024 that “if AI enters our workflow, it’s only a tool to benefit those experienced professionals in the earliest phases of ideation”.

I thought Divekick was cool, and so did Ben Barrett. Best of luck to all the Iron Galaxy developers facing redundancy.