I created and maintain an extremely detailed spreadsheet tracking video game industry layoffs for the last five years, so I decided to work up some numbers of the year 2013 so far.

There were 61 announced layoffs worldwide in 2013. 34 are in the US, 8 in the UK, 8 in Canada, 2 in Australia, and the rest are countries like Brazil, Belarus, India, China, etc. Of that total, 18 studios are confirmed as having closed, but I don’t have data on whether or not 19 of the remaining 43 studios are still open.

Only 40 studios announced layoff numbers. The total number of layoffs from the studios that reported numbers is 2,262, rounding up from the numbers for which I had “25 to 30” or “50 – 75” as the only data points. 20 studios did not report layoff numbers, and 1 studio (Io Interactive) only reported a 50% reduction in force.

Cities most affected:

– San Francisco, CA – 4 layoffs totaling 322 people
– Austin, TX – 5 layoffs totaling 304 people
– Montreal, Quebec – 1 layoff totaling 200 – 250 people (EA Montreal)
– San Diego, CA – 3 layoffs totaling 140 – 240 people (Trion Worlds’ full layoff numbers were never announced for the first event and I don’t have data on the studio’s headcount at closure)
– Dallas, TX – 1 layoff totaling 215 people (Zynga Dallas)
– Seattle, WA – 4 layoffs totaling 155 people
– Vancouver, BC – 6 layoffs totaling 91 people (however, PopCap Vancouver, Quicklime Games, and Slant Six’s closure did not report numbers)
– Boston, MA – 3 layoffs totaling ~35 people (Majesco Boston did not report numbers)

This would be a good time to mention www.GameJobHunter.com. 🙂