video game The industry has been in a troubled spot for the past year, with studio closures and job security at the forefront of developer concerns. Growing layoffs A bleak picture is painted for devs with seemingly no end in sight, while companies are busy pouring in money. AI initiatives.
Accordingly A new report From the organizers of the Game Developers Conference, 52 percent of devs surveyed said they worked at companies that were using Generative AI On their games. Of the 3,000 people surveyed, nearly half said they were concerned about the technology’s impact on industry and a growing number said they felt negatively about AI overall. The “State of the Game Industry” report, released Tuesday, is a series of surveys conducted each year by GDC organizers ahead of their annual conference. This year’s event will take place in March in San Francisco.
The 2025 GDC report comes on the heels of a tumultuous two years in the industry. Like sports too Astro Bot, Hell Diver 2And children Success, studio Like Microsoft And Sony has Cut the staff And Canceled games. Amidst a mix of cultural and economic factors affecting the industry, developers are still grappling with the company’s enthusiasm for technology that some are ethically concerned with.
One developer wrote, “I have a PhD in AI, I worked on developing some of the algorithms used by generative AI. “I deeply regret how naively I offered my contributions.”
Some 30 percent of developers who responded to the survey said they felt negatively about AI, compared to 18 percent last year; Only 13 percent believe AI is having a positive impact on sports, down from 21 percent in 2024. “No matter how you put it, generative AI is not a good substitute for real people and quality will suffer,” another developer wrote in their response.
For developers, A.I potential To help with a variety of tasks, respondents said, including coding, concept art, and 3D model generation, but when asked what they used AI for in the industry, “the most used in their responses The word ‘none,'” said GDC organizers. wrote
In theory, generative AI could help some developers lighten their workload. This is not happening. Instead, developers have reportedly been working longer hours for years. Thirteen percent of respondents reported putting in 51-plus-hour weeks, up from 8 percent of respondents last year. While those extra hours can be attributed to devs working extra work to compensate for colleagues lost during the 2024 industry-wide layoffs, many expressed concerns that AI was also a factor. “We should be using generative AI to help people do their jobs faster, not lose them,” one employee wrote.
Retrenchment, The The story of the industry For the past several years, still A big problem arose. “Survive until ’25“The mantra for struggling developers barely helps those who lost their jobs. One in 10 developers were laid off last year, according to the survey. “N/A” responses also increased. C: “The question didn’t apply because they were already fired or otherwise unemployed. In other words, it was no longer a concern because, in a way, it had already happened to them.”
