Game Industry Cuts 10,977 Jobs in 2026 as Korean Studios Offer Buyouts and Seek AI Skills

The worldwide video game business has shed 10,977 jobs since the start of the year, according to figures released this week by Always Supporting the Games Community, a nonprofit group that monitors employment across the sector. The count, covering January 1 through October 20, was reported on Tuesday and already surpasses the 9,197 cuts recorded for all of last year. The group said the full-year figure could reach 13,077 if restructuring continues through December.

The toll also runs above earlier years. The tracker put losses at 8,500 in 2022 and 10,500 in 2023, making the current cycle the deepest since it began collecting data. The organization attributed the rise to a broad restructuring wave that has spread from large publishers to mid-sized studios and support teams.

Where the losses are concentrated

Geography matters in the breakdown. Of the 148 restructuring cases confirmed this year, about 64 percent took place in North America, and that region accounted for roughly 76 percent of all job losses. Europe has also recorded closures and reductions, according to the group, though at a smaller scale than the North American share.

The most prominent single case came from Electronic Arts, the publisher behind Battlefield and the EA Sports FC titles. The company announced on October 21 that it would shut down BioWare, the studio responsible for the Mass Effect and Dragon Age series. The publisher plans to eliminate about 400 positions, or roughly 3 percent of its total workforce, according to the company's announcement.

Worker surveys point to a similar pattern. In the 2026 State of the Game Industry report from the Game Developers Conference, 28 percent of about 2,300 industry workers questioned said they had been laid off at some point in the previous two years.

Korean studios restructure and recruit

South Korean companies are running their own cost programs. NCSoft, known for the Lineage series, has used voluntary retirement and spun off development units since 2024. Chief executive Park Byung-moo said at an earnings briefing in February last year that headquarters staff had fallen to about 3,100 from roughly 5,000 through buyouts and spinoffs.

Devsisters, developer of the Cookie Run series, offered voluntary retirement to all employees in May, citing weak performance of its new title Cookie Run: OvenSmash and worsening earnings. Krafton, the publisher behind PUBG, has offered packages worth up to three years of salary as part of its own reductions.

At the same time, the same companies are expanding intake of entry-level recruits who can work with artificial intelligence tools. That shift is reshaping the game industry jobs market, where openings increasingly ask candidates to show fluency with generative tools alongside traditional design and production skills. Analysts describe a split market in which generalist roles are being trimmed while technical and tool-focused positions stay open.

What to watch next

The tracker will publish a final 2026 tally in January, which will show whether the pace of cuts slowed in the holiday quarter. Watch also for how the voluntary retirement rounds at Korean publishers affect headcount disclosures in coming earnings reports, and whether studios translate AI hiring into junior roles rather than replacing them. For workers, the near-term signal is that restructuring is broad but uneven, with North American teams absorbing the largest share so far.