Layoffs in the game industry have slowed down somewhat in the first few months of 2025, according to game job champion Amir Satvat.

Of course, any amount of layoffs is tough for people affected, and the game industry has had 2.5 years of nonstop layoffs and studio closings.

Satvat, in his spare time, has helped create easily accessible resources to help people find game jobs. And nearly 3,500 people have found jobs through those resources. These resources have given him access to data about job seekers and the companies advertising openings. That allows him to make predictions that no one else can do about hiring and firing in the industry. Satvat predicted that hiring would exceed firing for the first time in January for the first time in about 30 months, and that held true for the first quarter of 2025.

Now he said that game layoffs year-to-date are coming in light at 63% of initial projections.

“I can’t predict what will happen tomorrow – or next week, month, or year,” he wrote in a post on LinkedIn. “But I can tell you this: based on the best available actuals, known likely scenarios, all our community data (millions of lifetime observations across many categories), and time series forecasting, 2025 games layoffs (actuals + forecast) are currently trending at 6,145 versus the initial forecast of 9,769 — in terms of the expected layoffs for 2025 in gaming.

“There will undoubtedly be ups and downs. But this is the most encouraging gap between trend and projection I’ve seen since we started publicly sharing this exercise in the second half of 2024,” Satvat wrote. “I just hope to god it holds.”

Satvat is one of the only folks producing meaningful employment data in gaming. As an example, he predicted that hiring would exceed firing for the first time in January for the first time in about 30 months. He estimates there are 243,000 people directly employed in jobs. And he noted that someone over 50 has the same poor chances of getting a job in the game industry as someone who just graduated from college.