The Game Developer Conference happened this week in San Francisco, I was there and wrote about my experience in the last post. This is an awesome yearly event meant for professionals in the industry, not gamers, so it's mostly focused on tools and business.

As part of GDC they released their State of the Game Industry report it's a very detailed report with 52 pages full of information and stats. This is awesome to get a sense of the current state of the industry and where things are going in the future.

The survey went out to 2300 developers, that's a big enough sample to get some good results. On questions about AI, platforms, jobs and more.

The industry is still mostly male (64%) and 70% between 25 and 44. Interestingly more than half (54%) had less than 10 years of experience in the industry, in terms of studios it's a mix of AAA (31%), AA (18%) and 55% indies. 8% are solo devs and 57% work at companies with 50+ people.

The sad reality of the industry is still pretty rough with 1 in 4 people having been laid off in the past 24 months, and more than half (53%) expect layoffs to continue in the next 12 months. This also makes it so that both students and educators are concerned about their future in the industry.

Then comes the section everyone is waiting for, AI and how developers feels about it. 52% of companies report using GenAI for work, mostly using LLMs like ChatGPT, Gemini and Microsoft Copilot, followed by tools like Midjourney and Sora. The great majority (81%) uses these tools for brainstorming (which is also one of my own primary use cases), then for writing emails and code assistance (47%) while only 5% use it for player facing features, likely due to wanting to avoid backlash from players. For the most part usage of these tools is optional with only 6% mandating their usage and 16% forbidding them.

Despite all this usage, 52% feel GenAI is a negative for the industry, and this is a sentiment that has been growing, back in 2024 only 18% felt negative about it. For the most part developers are ok with using it for non-creative tasks but are heavily against using it in player facing ways.

In less controversial stats, Unreal is used by 42% of devs while Unity sits at 30% and Godot at a respectable 5%. Unreal dominates the AAA and AA space while Unity is mainly used by Indies. The top platforms are PC at 80%, PS5 at 40% while Xbox sits at 20%. Mobile at 16% and VR at 12%.

As for serious business stats, Premium games are king at 74% compared to just 26% on Free to Play, which honestly surprises me. Perhaps the free to play live service gold rush has finally truly died, especially after many recent high profile flops (like Highguard). As for marketing, social media is at the top at 65% with Streamers right behind it at 39% which honestly seems a bit low, I would have expected a higher number from Streamers since they are so important in marketing nowadays.

One big problem in the industry has always been crunch time, in this survey over half of developers had a 50+ hour workweek in the past 12 months. Perhaps related to that is the sentiment that 82% support unionization efforts in the games industry.

All in all lots of stats that show the trends in the industry. Things are still rough and expected to stay rough for the near future, AI will continue being a contentious topic with some developers using it while others refuse to, and the industry remains mostly male although nicely balanced between indies and everyone else.

In terms of GDC news, Xbox recently unveiled their upcoming Project Helix console. Still not many details but apparently there will be dev kits out in 2027. It will play Xbox and PC games with their goal being making the publishing process as simple as possible for developers. They also say how "indies have never been more important" which is a great message. Google is working on AI stuff, as are many other companies. There were tons of booths dedicated to Motion capture, Face capture, Haptics, Server hosting, AI mesh generation, AI analysis tools, and tons more.

Oh and the IGF awards also happened during GDC. Titanium Court took home the grand prize, it's a very very strange game coming out soon. Baby Steps got "Excellence in Audio", Wednesdays got the audience award, and more winners.