Japan Dodges Gaming's Worst Downturn Since 1983 Crash

Analyst Amir Satvat's tracker attributes 96% of 2026 gaming layoffs to North America and Europe, while Japanese publishers keep retention above 97%.

Games-industry analyst Amir Satvat, who has run the ASGC Games Industry Layoffs Tracker since 2022, told Edge magazine that roughly 57,628 jobs have been eliminated across the video game industry between 2022 and 2026 — a downturn he calls the worst since the 1983 crash, according to Notebookcheck. The pain is heavily concentrated geographically: the tracker shows 66% of this year's layoff events happened in North America alone, affecting 79% of the workers who lost their jobs. Adding Europe brings the two regions to 96% of all 2026 layoffs. Notebookcheck also reports that at one point, more than half of all layoffs worldwide were happening in California specifically over a 12-to-18-month stretch. Oddly, despite the losses, the overall global workforce has still grown slightly over the period, since hiring in some regions has offset cuts elsewhere.

Japan is a 'completely different ballgame,' Satvat says, and Notebookcheck reports the reasons are structural rather than lucky. Nintendo, Konami and Capcom all keep staff retention above 97%, a figure most Western studios can only dream of right now. He credits this to smaller, leaner teams: Japanese studios largely skipped the live-service gold rush and never embraced the idea that a game needs a 500-person team to succeed. Executive compensation plays a role too — Japanese executives typically earn in the $2–3 million range rather than the tens of millions common among some Western counterparts. As a comparison, Notebookcheck notes EA's CEO earned $38,649,984 in the last fiscal year, about 305 times the median EA employee's pay, while Nintendo's president reported total compensation of just $2 million over a similar period.

The stakes of this wave of cuts go beyond headcounts, and Polygon has devoted a full episode of its Point It Out series to what mass layoffs mean for the future of video games and the people who make them. When tens of thousands of experienced developers disappear from North American and European studios, the effects ripple into the games players actually receive: fewer mid-sized projects, more risk-averse portfolios, and strained teams covering the work of departed colleagues, according to Polygon's examination of the trend. Notebookcheck's reporting suggests a counterpoint in Japanese design philosophy, where leaner teams shipping focused titles have kept companies stable without live-service bloat.

None of this means Japanese studios are immune to the pressures reshaping the industry, Notebookcheck cautions — but smaller teams, a more cautious approach to big-budget projects, and far more modest executive pay look like real factors in why Nintendo, Capcom and Konami have largely dodged the layoffs hitting everyone else. For now, the data paints a stark picture: an industry-wide crisis that is, in practice, a Western one, with 96% of this year's recorded layoffs sitting in just two regions while Japanese publishers hold retention above 97%.