In recent years, there have been news about layoffs in the gaming industry almost every day. From Ubisoft, Microsoft, Sony to EA, many major companies have used layoffs as a financial report optimization tool. However, when the entire industry is pursuing short-term numbers, a speech made by the late Nintendo president Satoru Iwata more than ten years ago has been recently resurfaced by players, and one of the sentences is considered by many to be a slap in the face to the current gaming industry.
Layoffs may improve financial results, but they won’t produce good works.
In an interview in 2013, Iwata talked about corporate layoffs. He admits that from a financial perspective, large-scale layoffs may indeed lead to better short-term performance, but he believes that this approach may not be the right answer for the creative industry. Iwata said at the time that it was difficult for employees to devote themselves to creative work when they worried every day about whether they would be the next to be laid off. He bluntly said: “People who are afraid that they may be laid off cannot produce the same results.” These words have been hotly discussed by players again recently with the new round of layoffs in the gaming industry.
When the entire industry was laying off workers, Nintendo chose another path.
In fact, one of Iwata’s most famous decisions was his refusal to resort to mass layoffs to improve the Wii U’s financial situation during its poor performance. At that time, he even took the initiative to cut his salary, hoping to prevent the company from passing the problem onto the development team. His philosophy is simple. The most important asset of a game company has never been IP or hardware, but the people who create games. If employees lose their sense of security, even if the financial report becomes beautiful, they may lose the ability to produce outstanding works in the future.
Looking back 13 years later, this sentence is getting more and more harsh!
Ironically, Satoru Iwata’s speech seems to have more weight in 2026 than it did back then. In the past few years, tens of thousands of people have been laid off in the gaming industry. Many studios are still facing layoffs or downsizing after launching successful works. Even the development teams themselves do not know when the next round of lists will appear. Maybe the layoffs will really make the next quarter’s financial report look better, but no one has really answered the question Iwata asked back then: If developers live in fear every day, who will create those works that can move, surprise, and even be remembered by players for more than ten years?