Layoffs have been a constant drumbeat in gaming industry news since 2022. Even if the cadence of layoffs seems to have slowed in 2026, the severity of those cuts has not lessened. In July, Microsoft made 1600 staff redundant as part of its great reset, and promised investors they would let 1600 more staff go in the next 12 months.
Cuts like those and the ongoing economic pressures plaguing the industry – rising debt rates, a cost of living crisis, and a memory shortage that is making every aspect of making and playing video games pricier – should have the head of any large studio examining their plans for the future. Especially when games are taking longer to make, costing more to make, and up against a much greater volume of competition than even two years ago.
With all that in mind, when I wasn't talking to Saber Interactive's chief creative officer Tim Willits about generative AI, I wanted to know what he would do if he ran one of those 200-people big-budget game studios. Because say what you like about Saber (and there's a lot of things people like to say about Saber), but the developer is doing well at a time when a lot of other studios and publishers are struggling.
"The number one mistake that traditional legacy developers do is that they have two hundred employees in Texas, California, New York, whatever," Willits says. "Each one of those developers is expensive. You have 200 people that you're paying $15,000 per person per month, which gets you way over two million. They're all working on a game and you do not need 200 people before you have a vertical slice, so you're burning money."
It's great when a game enters full production, Willits says – "You have 200 of the most highly skilled, amazing people ever and you make an amazing game" – but when that game ships, the studio has to "Get those 200 super highly trained people onto massive production immediately." They're back to spending millions of dollars a month while they're still years away from a full release.
We've seen a growing number of studios let go of their teams either just before release (a la Star Wars: Zero Company) or immediately following launch (like with Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced). This tactic means no talent is retained, and a studio is starting largely from scratch with each new project, bringing with it little institutional knowledge.
While I would like to think that I'm breaking new ground with this conclusion, unfortunately, Gamesindustry.biz exists, and the costs and practices of running a large studio are well documented. What I was interested in, though, was Willits advice on what those 200 people should be put on next. "If you are a studio that has made mega hits, but it takes you five years to make a mega hit, it is totally okay if you do some work for hire," he says. "It doesn't make your mega hit AAA game any worse. If you have five or six things that help keep the lights on, it's totally okay. I would love to see one of these super studios do some fun side projects. There's nothing wrong with that."
Willits points to the early years of Saber Interactive, where the founders "had to hustle and take work from anywhere". Even today, as well as working on big licensed titles like Space Marine 2, John Carpenter's Toxic Commando, and Turok, as well as a set of original games such as the Snowrunner series, Saber continues to take on remaster work. They have a team updating the original Hitman right now. "Our remasters are very reliable," Willits says. "We get paid, IOI makes money."
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/publishers-are-afraid-of-certain-parts-of-the-world-saber-interactives-message-to-north-american-studios-is-to-get-their-head-out-of-their-own-geography
