Japanese devs aren’t facing the same layoff crisis because their executives are paid an order of magnitude less, ‘they didn’t get swept up in the live-service trend,’ and their teams are smaller, says industry expert

In an interview first published in Edge Magazine issue 428 and shared online via its Knowledge newsletter, former Tencent Games business development director and inaugural Game Awards Game Changer Amir Satvat offered his take on why the now-yearslong games industry layoff crisis has been so uneven in its geographic distribution.

There’s been a lot of debate whether the past three years have matched the infamous ’83 videogame crash⁠—Brenda Romero says yes, Tim Cain argues not quite (both saw it firsthand). “I think this is as bad as the ’83 crash if you’re a game developer based in North America or Western Europe, in a traditional triple-A studio,” said Satvat. “That is ground zero for the destruction.” Satvat expanded on this particular observation in a recent post on LinkedIn.

“Japan is a completely different ballgame,” Satvat said, praising its industry-wide tendency to retain staff, even if sacrifices are required in short-term profit or executive compensation. “Everyone calls out Nintendo, but you can look at Konami or Capcom⁠—these companies all have staff retention of 97%+.”

“My understanding is that, generally, Japanese teams tend to be much smaller and leaner,” Satvat added. “They didn’t get swept up in the live-service trend, or into these mega-blockbusters with 500-person teams.” He also pointed to one of the great crazy-making contradictions of the ongoing crisis: “The executive salaries. [Japanese executives] still make great money, but it’s two or three million dollars, not 30 million.”

Satvat provided some caveats: There have been mass layoffs at Japanese gaming firms in recent years, but nowhere near the level in North America or Western Europe. One issue Satvat did not touch on was developer compensation⁠—it’s not just the CEOs who are paid less. A 2019 CEDEC report⁠—discussed in English in 2022 by consultant Serkan Koto⁠—put the average salary of Japanese game devs at $37,000.

Looking at the same period of time in the US, the website Love For Games catalogued 5,966 entries for base salaries offered to H1-B visa applicants at game companies in 2018. Most were in the high five or low-six figures, while the lowest entries I spotted were still north of $40,000⁠—sorry gamers, I don’t have the time to average all 6,000 manually for this article.

More recently (so a less relevant, but still worthwhile comparison with the 2019 CEDC data), the 2025 GDC Salary Report put the average pay at $142,000 from a survey of 500 games industry professionals.

Back to the layoff crisis, Satvat estimates that the industry is still growing when it comes to new positions, but at a rate that barely covers attrition and pales in comparison to its growth at the end of the 2010s (the following figures were provided to Edge by Satvat or are based on his data):

• 18,000-25,000 new jobs per year
• 14,500 total layoffs predicted for 2026
• 58,000 total layoffs from 2022-2026
• The industry grew by 32,000-67,000 new jobs from 2022-2026
• Compared to growth of 150,000 new jobs from 2017-2021

“It is hard for me to foresee a picture where the industry doesn’t eventually contract from its current size,” Satvat said.” If I’m being optimistic, there is some number that is not a ghastly decrease from where we are now, where things can stabilize out. But for it to stay exactly the same as when you had these very large firms that were relatively stable? It’s hard for me to visualize how that happens.”