I work in the game industry. I applied to this job nearly 6 months ago. It took them 3 months to perform several interviews with multiple people in various disciplines. I got offer at the end of September, signed the offer letter, it was gonna be 80k/year. I had been looking for new jobs for this entire year, this was going to be the best paying job I've ever had in game dev, double what I've ever made, I was so hopeful.
And then last week, because this studio's parent company is having to “restructure”, they laid off a bunch of people and a number of other people including myself had their job offers rescinded. I put in my notice to my current retail job, other people put in THEIR notices to their jobs. We were all off-loading our work. Then we got fucked because some rich assholes aren't seeing enough money in their pockets so they cut people and took jobs away from people who now are probably unable to get their jobs back.
I don't blame this studio, game devs are some of the hardest working, lowest paid people in entertainment. It's greedy CEOs that screw over our studios with their money grubbing soulless cash grab bullshit and their complete lack of understanding of how game development even works.
I'm sure people will be like “well why the hell did you allow this to happen, why did you wait half a year for this job?!” Dudes… I've never had even a TASTE of that kind of money. 80k a year?! I can't even fathom the way that would have changed my life, me and poverty are real good friends, it was like a light at the end of my year of unfortunate events. Also no, this was not a scam, my friend works for this company and they were vouching for me the entire time. They're furious that this happened too, it was a total surprise to them that this happened.
Game devs need to unionize now. I'm now jobless, down to my last 3 grand, and unable to find work in the industry until the new year because the holidays/end of the year are literally the worst time to find any game dev work. I'm so incredibly furious and humiliated, life should not be this hard.