Opinion: Everything hurts and no one knows when the pain will end

Image by Vladibulgakov via Adobe Stock.

"Do you think things will be better this year?"

It was February 2026, at the DICE Summit in Las Vegas. I was in the Aria hotel lobby, checking a map so I could find a friend on the labyrinthine casino floor. Out of the blue, a tall man—the owner of a small studio—approached me with this question.

This was one of three questions that have dogged at me for the last several months. Three questions that you yourself might be frustrated that you can't give a satisfying answer to. Three questions that, in such literally unprecedented times, are the best compass I can give you to find your way.

This man seemed to hope that as a journalist, I'd have some useful forecast about the game industry's financial woes. I didn't answer right away—instead I racked my brain for any clue that 2026 wouldn't be another dire year for people who make games.

But nothing came. And as I write this in late June in the shadow of mass layoffs at Destiny 2 and Marathon developer Bungie (with reported major cuts at Xbox looming in the distance), I'm glad that the answer I gave was "I don't know."

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Had I said "yes," that would have been a foolish promise desperately drawn from the conception that surely things couldn't get any worse. Had I said "no," that would have been hubris. Pretending I could predict how brutal June would be and how dire things could still get.

The headlines tell us of studio closures and multimillion dollar game sales and tales of how AI will replace labor in the same 24-hour periods. Does this also make your head spin? Does it make you turn the problem over and over in your head, searching for solutions or trying to grasp the doom we all face?

If you do, then stop with me and breathe for a moment. As I said, this was the first of three questions—the brass casing that defines our compass. Help me answer the other two, and we shall have a device that can help us deal with the moment.

So few people have caused so much suffering

"Why is the game industry still struggling?"

This question came from one of my colleagues here at Informa Festivals during a December 2025 offsite. My coworker here was still new to the ins and outs of the game industry. I proceeded to monologue for 10 minutes about inflation, AI-driven memory shortages, boom-or-bust development cycles—all the very-real conditions that have harmed our industry.

But what I wanted to say was "a group of fewer than 1,000 people made a series of horrible decisions, and the whole industry is paying for it."

Seasoned developers and decently-sourced journalists must hold three truths in their head simultaneously: First, that economic and political factors beyond the industry's control have created conditions that depress consumer spending and expand risk for large companies.

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Second, executives and studio higher-ups at Embracer Group, Xbox, PlayStation, EA, Epic Games, Ubisoft, WB Games, and beyond gambled on infinitely increasing player spending and left their companies vulnerable to weak game launches and investor withdrawals.

And third—it's not just the bad decisions that devastated the industry. It's their terrible behavior. The tale of the game industry's hard times is not just one of mismanagement, but allegations of verbal abuse, sexual harassment, fraud, retaliation, and a litany of other abuses of power. Some have made public, but most proliferate in off-the-record conversations, whisper networks, and hushed conversations around industry events.

Not all of those who doomed their companies behaved in this way—but for those who did, the connection is obvious. If you're in a position of power and have no regard for the people around you, why would you care what happens to the hundreds or thousands of people you're responsible for?

To hold these truths in your mind is to know sorrow and anger, especially if you've lived them firsthand. It's traumatic for some, and an overdose of information for those not as close to the blast zone.

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It's natural to try and escape or overcome this pain, but when it is so relenting, so incessant—what can anyone do to stop it? How can anyone predict when it will end?

That leads us to our final question, one which shall be the glass casing that completes our compass.

We are all struggling to handle the pain

"How do you handle all the bad news?"

This question—posed to me by a developer at a Boston-area game dev meetup—was the most surprising of the three. It's one each person will have their own way of answering, but I suspect too many struggle to answer this question.

That's because this years-long crisis has either destroyed the few coping mechanisms developers had for small batches of layoffs or exposed how unprepared we were for this kind of economic destruction. And when you spend your days analyzing how we got to this mess over and over again, you risk losing sight of other people's pain.

If it helps, I'll bare my soul a little and share my response. I unconsciously use a visualization technique to assign images to the problems at hand, to make them somewhat tangible and hence, possible to contextualize. Ever since childhood I've come to affiliate all sorts of emotions with different visual scenarios in my head.

Even as I write, the rumored impending layoffs conjure the image of thunder rumbling in the distance. Every layoff announcement feels like artillery crashing down around me. And when I try to make sense of all the industry's problems, the visual of standing around a war table of some sort puts distance between me and the terrors.

Being able to recontextualize the horrors that could otherwise drive me to despair has kept me from giving up all hope.

It is not a universal solution. But as someone professionally required to expose themselves to the unending torrent of bad news, I've realized this habit is my personal means—my own compass—of managing my emotions around the industry's woes. Not everyone has found such a coping mechanism.

The pain and complexity of our situation has left many in our community wrangling with a situation too complex for any one human mind, driving predictions of doom or manic rants about how the industry can be fixed.

Everything hurts. No one knows when the pain will end.

I write this not just as a grim admission, but to identify the magnetic force that pulls the needle of our metaphorical compass.

It is as much a calibration point as it is a destination, a notion that can be navigated even if it can't be escaped.

Hopefully acknowledging just how bad the current tides are—and neither bending towards doom nor projecting unearned optimism—can help us avoid making the callous, cruel mistakes that brought us here in the first place.

About the Author

Senior Editor, GameDeveloper.com

Bryant Francis is a writer, journalist, and narrative designer based in Boston, MA. He currently writes for Game Developer, a leading B2B publication for the video game industry. His credits include Proxy Studios' 4X strategy game Zephon, Iron Anchor Studios' Down With The Ship, and Amplitude Studio's 2017 game Endless Space 2.