It's readily apparent that the COVID-19 pandemic has had a dramatic effect on the video game industry. Not only have all of 2020's spring, summer, and fall gaming conventions and events been canceled or moved to digital, but game developers across the world are working from home. The industry is in a state of turmoil, despite the surge in interest and apparent success stories. A recent survey from the Game Developers Conference provides evidence regarding the current status quo in the gaming industry.
The survey, which polled near 2,500 game developers, asked several questions tangentially related to the pandemic. For example, 33% of game developers confirmed that the game they were working on had been delayed as a result of the pandemic. That's a significant number in the grand scheme of things, especially with next-gen consoles set to launch later this year.
Further, a total of 97% of polled developers are were working from home. Of those, 27% were already working from home before the pandemic, while 70% more say they began working from home due to the pandemic. The shift happened incredibly quickly. And that this many developers were even able to shift to working from home is astonishing. It may have resulted in 33% of developers' games being delayed, but 66% of developers maintaining without a delay is an impressive feat.
Further, while the public view might be that video games are booming during the pandemic, 34% of developers say that their game business has declined. Only 31% have said that business increased during the pandemic. From a developer perspective, the industry is declining slightly during the pandemic.
If game developers' belief that business is declining doesn't support the idea fully, this next number does. Almost 10% of developers that responded to the survey said that they were laid off as a result of the pandemic. The transition to working from home, as well as declining business in over a third of gaming businesses, has led to a significant wave of layoffs. Surprisingly, these layoffs have not been widely reported.
There are likely a myriad other ways that the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the gaming industry and developers. Those ways aren't easily tracked via a survey covering a broad swathe of topics. Nevertheless, the few pandemic-related subjects that the survey did cover should hopefully provide some insight into how the gaming industry is changing because of the pandemic.
Source: GDC