this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2026
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I'm A Game Dev Who Got Layed Off From His Non-Game Dev Job (lemmy.world)
submitted 6 days ago by Road_Warrior_10@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world
99 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Hello, just wanted to share my story as a reminder with all the lay offs in the gaming industry, it has been terrible outside of it too. I've been working as an automation QA for a pretty decent software company and I was about to hit like 11 years on the job. Also on the side I've been trying to get my own indie game dev studio off the ground with releasing 3 small games in the past 3 years.

After saving for like 10 years and living in small rented apartments, last summer I finally managed to secure enough money so I can get a loan to buy my first apartment. After a year of dealing with contractors (yes, they are that slow!!!) I finally moved and was hoping to be able to focus my free time on my game again. However literally first Monday we have a meeting with a head of our department and they said we are practically being replaced with A.I. So around 60% of the company is gone across all offices in 3 different continents...

I guess my dream has always been to go full time game dev, it's just I was hoping to be able to do it on my own terms and not kinda being forced into it. But with no real money coming in from my previous games I might not be able to make payments for the place I bought and spent most of my adult life saving for.

So now I guess I don't have a choice but to go all in on my current game. If you want to check it out and leave feedback on how it looks or even wishlist, you can so here STEAM

Wish me luck guys and gals!

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[–] moonburster@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

OH NO I MISSED IT ;-;

I saw you promote this a good while ago. Currently not in the market for a new game, but I'd like to support. If you send me your PayPal or something I'll donate some for the cause

[–] Luffy879@lemmy.ml 67 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (46 children)

So let me get this straight: you say its not generated with AI, yet you include the fucking Prompt of ChatGPT?

The translation:

Heres the Translation into German. I have chosen a clinical, depressing tone (spoiler: it didn't, its quite meta) to underline the tension and hard ethical content of your game.

[–] Miaou@jlai.lu 21 points 6 days ago

You were not kidding lol. Also the case for Italian. Not for French and Spanish though. Not very consistent copy paste skills

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[–] Road_Warrior_10@lemmy.world 98 points 6 days ago (2 children)

And the funny thing is, the company isn't even doing bad. I found out from a friend who still works there that they are aiming for a sale at the end of the year, so effectively this is a way for them to pump up the stock. They will say their profits went up by 50-60%, but it didn't come from more clients, but from not paying wages. And this way stock go up. Also same friend said they are struggling a lot with AI. It can be helpful with coding, but It can't do everything, and they are literally asking it to do everything or at least hold long enough until the sale goes trough . Just greed... and hundreds of families put in a bad spot, so already rich people on top can make a lot of money fast instead of also a lot of money, but slower...

[–] Bougie_Birdie@piefed.blahaj.zone 42 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Well, on the bright side, at least this teaches you the real value of AI is that it tells people what products to avoid:

image

If it wasn't AI it would be something else though. Working for the man always sucks.

We will watch your career with great interest

[–] Road_Warrior_10@lemmy.world 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Thank you!

[–] jorm1s@sopuli.xyz 22 points 6 days ago

If you really want to sell the no gen AI thing, you might want to consider cleaning up the steam page translations. For example the finnish translation contains these lines:

Tässä on käännös suomeksi ilman pitkäviivaa:

...

Jos haluat, voin tehdä myös tiiviimmän ja myyvemmän version, joka sopii pelin kauppa- tai esittelytekstiin. Haluatko, että teen sen?

which roughly translate to:

Here's a translation in finnish without a long line:

...

If you want, I can also make a more dense and a better selling version , which fits in a game's store page or decription. Do you wan't me to do it?

Personally I don't mind AI being used for the store page translations, and I can see how easy it is to make a mistakes like that, but maybe anyone reading that would get a slightly better impression of the game without those extra bits.

[–] Wildmimic@anarchist.nexus 22 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I've been on the receiving end of "making the bride look good" for selling the company too, 3 times in my life. Either you still have a job but everything around you falls apart because there aren't enough people to keep shit running, or you lose the job; both variants suck. I always was on the team "keeping my job", but it also always ended with me fleeing as soon as i could because working conditions deteriorated fast.

Wishlisted your game !

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[–] MousePotatoDoesStuff@piefed.social 2 points 3 days ago

Hey, I tried playing that demo! Will give it a try again soon. Also, wishing you best of luck!

[–] DanceMomsSavedMe@lemmy.zip 30 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Man I like Valve but I hate this shit about not paying you until it gets to $100.

They cite the cost of sending and receiving money, dude that is practically nothing for business I mean what like 3-5%.

Its a pretty shitty practice to be real.

On the other hand I suppose they do have a lot of games listed that probably never get past the $100 mark but still. They still got the 30% cut they take out of that fees and costs be damned!

[–] DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world 27 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

The payout cost is probably less about the bank fee and more about accounting and other managing overheads. Remember that steam may have to handle refunds that happened after the payout. Would be a mess to chase a few dollars from a dev that doesn't have a proper revenue stream. Just not worth it to steam.

Also, correct me if I am wrong, but I am pretty sure the money not paid transfers over to another month, so you probably get most of your money sooner or later.

It's not ideal but it is understandable IMO.

[–] DanceMomsSavedMe@lemmy.zip 6 points 5 days ago

This makes sense thank you for pointing this out looks like there was a few things I didn't understand about this process.

[–] LwL@lemmy.world 6 points 5 days ago

It's a common practice, twitch does the same. It probably just scales with a very large amount of payments that would be needed otherwise, especially with all the shovelware steam gets these days.

[–] lyralycan@sh.itjust.works 42 points 6 days ago (1 children)

So many people's lives are damaged by corporate decisions.. Hope things look up, and that Steam excuse makes sense but damn that sucks.

As for the game I love explorations into real-life fucked-up experiments! Will definitely be playing aha

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[–] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 26 points 6 days ago (2 children)

You may want to try to deliberately get away from the "unreal fivey" look.

I like the underlying style but the strong reflections and resulting high contrast image really hits that "unreal five" look in a bad way, which I suspect will turn a lot of people off.

It's unfortunate but "indie unreal five game" is the new "steam asset flip", in that it is something that makes people skip a game. It's easy to slap realistic lightning into games now, so it has stopped being an indicator of quality, and slowly become the opposite.

Try to find something that works with the games style that you can do to the shading or post processing that sets you apart.

I might mute reflections a bit and add at least some grime and imperfections to surfaces. The cleanliness of surfaces together with unreals realistic lighting is a big part of the "indie unreal five" look.

[–] PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world 9 points 6 days ago (2 children)

At this point, if your game has the UE5 look and runs like shit, then I won’t consider it all.

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[–] ExtraMedicated@lemmy.world 12 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I got burned out developing business software and lost my job after 13 years. I'm lucky if my previous game makes $100 in a year at this point. So now I'm wondering at what point I'll need to give up on my dream of being a full time indie game dev and start looking for a new job.

[–] PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world 21 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Start looking. It’s a very saturated market. Unless you can get some YouTubers or streamers to play your game then it’s not going to make much of anything.

[–] nullify3112@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Can you expand on why you think the market is saturated?

Games are some of the most complex pieces of software you can make and they rely heavily on artistic elements, meaning that it’s not 100% technical work.

It makes it hard IMHO to even become a game dev and make a game in the first place. Wondering why you think the game dev market is saturated given that assumption.

[–] kazerniel@lemmy.world 7 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Can you expand on why you think the market is saturated?

Not the one you responded to, but:

More than 19,000 games released on Steam in 2025 — Chris Zukowski’s tally puts it at 20,282, which works out to about 55 games per day. And 2026 is running faster: SteamDB counted 11,979 releases in the first half of the year alone, a pace of roughly 66 per day that projects to something near 24,000 for the full year if it holds. (source)

and roughly 3/4 of them has less than 50 reviews, and half has less than 10, which means basically no audience (source)

[–] nullify3112@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Well that is an over-saturation of games. Isn't that mainly due to AI tools making it easy to make all the elements you would need for a game in a mediocre way? People are still playing games and buying them and game devs still have to make them. Are you saying that the industry has been automated enough that the need for talent really isn't there anymore?

[–] kazerniel@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

On the 2nd link it shows that in 2022, even before genAI tools broke into game development, Steam released 12,248 games, so on average 34/day. So genAI at most only doubled the output rate.

Yes, there were many low-effort asset flips out there even before AI, but I think the main factor is that game development is a global industry, and from the pool of billions of gamers, tons and tons of talented and hard-working game developers emerge who all compete against each other for attention. And like in other creative industries, the handful of most successful companies on top command most of the audience's interest, while the vast majority of aspirants can't make a livelihood from this work.

I found this article from early 2022 that says that at the time there were 44,000 game developers on Steam, 3/4 of whom only released a single game. (It doesn't say the reason why - I suppose could be just starting their career, or their first release was so unsuccessful they didn't continue trying.) 57% of developers at the time made less than 1,000 USD lifetime revenue.

[–] Sanctus@anarchist.nexus 3 points 4 days ago

Wishlisted :) goodluck out there! I'll see you on the steam store!

[–] LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.world 8 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Will this be steamdeck compatible?

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[–] viral.vegabond@piefed.social 9 points 6 days ago (1 children)

That game looks good from the trailer! Great sinister vibes, and it kind of reminded me of portal a little bit with the omnipotent computer voice. That elevator music -was- pleasant! Lol

[–] Road_Warrior_10@lemmy.world 8 points 6 days ago

Thank you! A fan in chat of one of the streamers called it Portal with murder hah

[–] DragonOracleIX@lemmy.ml 4 points 5 days ago

The game has an intriguing premise. Will check out the demo when I have time.

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