Arrowhead CEO believes that studio heads avoid responsibility for failures, and ordinary developers pay the biggest price
The gaming industry has experienced massive layoffs over the past few years, which can largely be attributed to the excessive growth in interest in gaming during the pandemic, which then began to decline. Ultimately, it's the failures of studio executives that developers pay for, and Arrowhead CEO Shams Yordjani says he doesn't want to make the same mistakes at the studio that's known for Helldivers 2.
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"I wish our industry hadn't lost almost... 30, 40, 50 thousand jobs in the last two years," Yordjani tells The Game Business. "A lot of people at the top have made very stupid business decisions, and there's very little accountability on their part. Which of these executives are resigning? Or cut their salaries?"
Yordjani acknowledges that developers are "paying the price" and that huge, rapid expansion is "a terrible way to run our industry."
Yordjani says he wants Arrowhead to "be a model for sustainable growth because the industry is not in a good place today" with companies cutting jobs due to "bad growth decisions made by business leaders who took stupid risks. Hopefully, those risks will become a little less foolish in the coming years, but the gaming industry regularly proves how little leaders are willing to take care of people.
"I'm not saying you don't need to grow, but do it in a way that doesn't require you to fire a third of the company because of stupid decisions," concludes Yordjani. "I'm not going to hire a hundred people, I'd love to do that and help people in the industry, but my first priority is to provide people with jobs for many years."
Source: The Game Business
