I really wish the tech industry was unionized because these major cuts, even if they can’t directly reach out and affect indie companies (and in some fashion benefit them by removing AAA developer competition) affect the entire industry of video game development and what it is like to be a worker in it even if you don’t actually directly work for one of these companies.
It is really sad to see game development face a similar fate to the other arts where it is becoming a valueless skill practiced by people in their free time. The word large corporations and execs are using to justify this is “AI” but it really doesn’t matter if AI works or not, what matters is that the identity of a game developer and programmer becomes fundamentally devalued.
It makes me feel a little less bad seeing the hoards of computer people who stilllll believe AI can never come for their jobs or that anything happening in the tech industry can’t be threat to the value of their profession and they have such a smug sense of naive ignorance about class politics, it is like watching a birthday cake get smushed by a steamroller.
At the end of the day though that feeling is self indulgent in an unproductive way, I don’t want birthday cakes to get smushed by steamrollers it isn’t how cake should be treated.